


These Brushfire Battles

by carnography (orphan_account)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Jealousy, Love Triangles, Multi, New Caprica, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 20:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3425294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/carnography
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the missing year on New Caprica, Laura Roslin and Bill Adama fail to nurture their romantic feelings for one another. With the Admiral distant, both physically and emotionally, the newly turned schoolteacher kindles a relationship with a civilian carpenter--much to the detriment of all those involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Infinite Ache (July)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LiveJournal, each of the first five installments covered the events in a particular month of the missing year. Afterward, "due to popular demand," I wrote an addendum of three more chapters/months that slot into the events of the original story. 
> 
> Rather than rearranging them into their chronological order, I'm going to post these installments in the order of when they were written.

Rain on New Caprica was different from how he remembered it on Picon. Denser, somehow. More insistent than those gentle showers that smelled like crisp estuary water. Picon (the Picon before the attacks) was always drenched, and he loved it as a man just as much as when he was a boy. The rain felt safe, shrinking the world into a more intimate setting. It pattered against the tarp of his tent. Steady, relentless. _Insistent_. Now that there was someone on this planet to hear it and know it for what it was, the rainfall made sure to attract special attention. As the steady beat of the shower increased its tempo, she raised her head from the pile of blankets and looked skyward.

"It started going again," she murmured, resting her chin on the heel of her hand. Laura glanced at him from over her shoulder, her pale eyes shining in amusement. Her hair was wild, a curly mass of red hair falling against her white skin. He loved it, loved how untamed she looked. She was just a woman, and he was just a man. Lying naked beneath their ratty, worn blankets. His fingers trailing the hollow of her spine. She cast him one of those pretty, knowing smiles—so soft, so sexy. His fingers reached the delta of her lower back, twitched and then faltered.

"I like it," he said.

"The rain."

"The rain," he said, ghosting his hand up her smooth skin. "This. Tonight." He paused. "Most of tonight."

Laura chuckled, shifting on her stomach. A sleepy grin. "I should have warned you. First impressions are not Bll's forte." She paused. "Trust me."

+++

"Dayton Willer."

He had to shout the introduction over the clamor of bad music and drunken cavorting. The merciless tinkering of the rain on the tin roof of the city's favorite little home-made dive. Whenever it rained, the place was saturated with New Caprican denizens, and it was even fuller tonight. Shore leave.

The Admiral took his outstretched hand with an (overly) firm grip and shook once before letting go.

"It's good to meet you," he said, as stony and brusque as Dayton expected. His gruff voice carried over the noise with very little effort, and Dayton envied that ease.

The gargoyle-faced Admiral arrived at the dive while Dayton was at the bar, bartering for more of that moonshine everyone was drinking these days. (Strong stuff. Burnt down your throat. Laura always grimaced when she drank it, but Dayton...well, he had come to enjoy the taste of fire.) And while he waited on both drinks, Dayton watched Laura and Adama with interest. Like one observes the interaction between two completely different mammals, somehow coexisting. Over the noise, it was impossible to hear what they said to each other. But she smiled at him; and surprisingly, the Admiral smiled back. Laura then perched on her toes to yell something in his ear, at which his face dropped and took on a look of confusion.

Two overfilled jugs of booze slammed onto the counter. As Dayton took both in hand, Laura and Adama looked in his direction. Beside Laura's sweet smile, Adama did not look particularly welcoming at all.

And so it came to this. Awkward introductions. Obvious discomfort between both men. An awkward silence between the three of them, as the Admiral's eyes flicked to Laura and then deliberately avoided her.

"Would you like a drink, Admiral?" Dayton offered, trying to loosen up the strange coil of tension.

"No. No thank you," Adama declined. “If you'll excuse me, I think I see some of my men. Haven't seen some of them since they went planetside. It was good to meet you."

With that, the Admiral brushed past them, merged with the crowd; and soon after, some loud cheering and drunken greetings from _Galactica_ ’s proud soldiers could be heard from one of the back tables.

Turns out he was popular among his men. From what he'd seen, Dayton couldn't figure out why.

+++

He swept the blanket off her body. The rain was still coming down, drumming on the tarp and taut canvas. Dayton planted a kiss on her lower back, palm smoothing down one of her thighs. Those beautiful thighs. Laura hummed deep in her throat, snuggling deep into her pillow with her eyes closed. A smile on her face.

"He'll grow on you," she mumbled, her voice light and drowsy. Dayton stopped his movement. His lazy trail of kisses, escalating up her spine, stalled mid-way.

"Maybe _I'll_ grow on _him_."

There was a definite distinction between the two. What others might dismiss as simple syntax, Dayton scrutinized. It was ingrained in him now—analysis, the subtleties of semantics, emotional responses. Back on Picon, he was a professor of psychology and though he no longer practiced the profession, the profession didn't seem to want to give up its practice on him. Simple slips of tongue. Simple details. Everything that was supposed to be simple only heralded more difficulty and complication. Laura knew that. He knew that.

Adama did too.

Dayton pushed the thought out of his mind and resumed kissing and stroking and laving her soft skin. His tongue dragged along the elegant curve of her shoulder-blade, his hand sliding beneath her thick hair until the heel of his palm rested against the base of her head. He grasped a gentle handful of hair in his fingers. Humidity. Sweat. A sultry sigh that drove him absolutely insane. The hard-falling rain made the air dense, a stifling sheen of sweat sticking to the creases of his rapidly heating body.

Dayton groaned. He couldn’t help himself as his body pressed into her side, half sprawled over her as she oscillated between clarity and sleep. He made a suggestion; a wordless nudge that encouraged her to roll onto her back. She did, with a hazy smile that melted against his lips.

"Again?" Laura teased, an eyebrow lifted.

"You don't want to?"

She smirked. "I didn't say that."

Laura propped herself up on her elbows and tossed the hair from her face. His hands, regretfully calloused from his new-found work, slid from her neck to the delicate artistry of her collarbone. Her plump, white breasts—nipples pebbled against his palms. His eyes thirsted on the sight. Laura hummed, deep in the back of her throat, and the sound instantly drew his gaze.

"You gonna write about them in your book too?" she asked with a playful tilt of her head.

Dayton shot a look at the battered journal in the corner. His project: documenting history. Something so important reduced to a mere hobby when he had the time. He looked back at her with a wolfish grin.

"I have a feeling the editor might suggest omitting any wax poetic about the President's gorgeous breasts," Dayton murmured as he fell back on his heels. Laura rose to her knees, trailing a hand down his chest. Her fingertips skirted about his throbbing erection.

"Might seem a bit subjective," he breathed. "Biased. Inappropriate."

Laura graced him with a slow, coy smile. "A little self-indulgent, perhaps?"

Dayton smiled. "That sounds about right."

It was Laura's turn to make a soundless request. She got him on his back with a mere touch—her fingers pressing into the crook of his arm. Her eyes dark. Suggestive and subtle. He couldn't help but grin when he fell, Laura crawling over him with limbs as graceful as liquid. Hair swinging, curtaining his face as she grasped his hands in her own. The rain continued. The rain continued hard, but the beat was nothing compared to his pounding heart. His aching cock. Their quickening breath. She smiled.

"A little self-indulgence is alright," she whispered, kissing him once. "You just can't lose total control.”

Laura pinned his hands to the side of his head with a wicked and beautiful grin.

+++

The soldier's hand fell hard. The wooden table rumbled with the force, jugs of moonshine knocking to and fro as the former pilot retracted his sore hand and rubbed it gingerly.

Haphazard clattering. Drunken hollering. Feet stamping on the dirt floor. The clinking of cubits going from one hand to another. Dayton and Laura hadn't gambled, just watched as the former pilots challenged their undefeated CO in an arm wrestling competition that all began when the Admiral's pilots were drunk enough to start boasting.

A volatile young blonde lifted her drink and unleashed a drunken cackle. "The Old Man's still got it!" she belted, stumbling into a curly-haired woman at her side who looked less than pleased. "Pay up, kitty Kat!"

Starbuck stuck out her hand and danced gleefully on her toes as the woman named Kat slapped a few coins into her hand.

"Frak you, Starbuck," Kat growled, glowering at the pilot who rose from his seat. "Thanks a lot, Rooster!"

Rooster was too preoccupied with nursing his hand to notice the haranguing. He stepped back into the crowd, welcomed with another drink and several yells.

Dayton glanced at Laura, who was expressionless amidst the smiling faces. Expressionless and sober. He touched her arm. "You alright?"

"Fine." She smiled and waved her arm. "I'm fine."

"Do you want to leave?" he asked, taking another burning sip of his drink.

"No, no,” Laura assured him, smiling faintly. "We'll wait out the storm with everyone else."

The storm was rough enough to have everyone stay in the roadhouse, and enough to have everyone get more and more drunk. Now they were all gathered around the table in the back watching Adama win round after round of arm wrestling bouts and becoming more and more loose.

The blonde climbed on top of a table and threw down her glass to silence them. The shattering glass, along with Starbuck's manic giggle somewhat calmed the gaggle of drunk pilots. "Next round," she slurred, "The Old Man picks!"

The pilots agreed with the suggestion, bursting out with cheers and callsigns. Their fists ratta-tatting on the tabletops. Adama looked up from his drink with a half-smile, and unclasped his uniform—button by button. He shed the jacket and dropped it to the floor before he cast a dark look in Laura's direction.

"Laura Roslin," Adama bellowed, quieting the riotous pilots, "send that pansy-ass boyfriend of yours up here and let's see what he's made of."

The crowd around them erupted with good-natured laughs and yells. Dayton was launched forward by the kids at his back. There were a few encouraging slaps on his shoulders as the group shoved him toward the table.

"Good luck, Doc. You're gonna need it," they said in some phrase or another until Dayton was seated across from one cocky, surly Admiral with paws that looked like they could crush stones. Muscles in his frakking arms that were far larger than Dayton's, even with all the physical work he’d been doing nowadays. They were complete opposites--he and Adama. Dayton was tall and lean, fair haired and fair skinned. A smile on his face to match Adama's scowl.

"I'll tell you up front Admiral," Dayton joked, "this isn't going to be much of a match."

Adama ground his elbow into the table and stared at him so intensely that Dayton thought he should laugh to break the mood. Wasn't this all supposed to be in good fun? The Admiral's arm was up—waiting. Dayton squared his shoulders, and his smile slowly disappeared. Planted his elbow onto the rickety wooden table, Dayton grasped the Admiral's sweaty hand. HIs grip was like a vice. His fingers felt like they would break. So, he grabbed onto Adama with enough force that it turned his knuckles white.

"Alright!" Starbuck laughed, "Get things rolling, Racetrack!"

The half-dressed brunette hunched over the table, her hand hovering over the surface. "Ready ... " Racetrack waited a moment before she slammed her palm onto the wood. "Go!"

A female pilot squealed, and the crowd's cheering shook the tinny rafters. At first, the arm wrestle went nowhere. Tensions equaling, canceling out. His fist swayed one way, Adama's the other. Then they stalled. The already warm air grew hot as Dayton fought against the Admiral. The obnoxious cheering of the pilots drifted to the back of his mind as he focused on his trembling biceps and the trickle of sweat that began to slide down his temple. Adama's eyes never left him, his craggy face caught in a perpetual state of discontent. He was especially hard on the eyes. Gone was the easy smile that Adama had given his younger, drunker opponents. He meant business, and Dayton’s strength was waning. He could feel it in his muscles. Adama was steadfast, fueled by power and victory and Gods knew what else ... keeping him sharp and strong.

Dayton winced, his arm succumbing to the superior strength as Adama slowly began to lower his hand to the table. He fought back, of course ... but his loss was inevitable. He knew it. Hated it. But he wasn't going to deny it.

His luck changed.

The Admiral lost his concentration. His eyes flicked to a spot beyond Dayton's shoulder, and his expression changed. Dayton took the opening, tightening his grip and swinging Adama's hand to the opposite side. He pinned his big paw to the tabletop. Their audience began shouting and whooping, some complaining and others celebrating. Sounds of gambling wrought with the undercurrent of the storm and the sweet buzz of booze. Dayton face split into an instantaneous grin. He wanted to revel in the defeat on Adama's face, but there was none. There was no one sitting across from him. Amid the congratulatory pats on the back, Dayton looked over to see his opponent shuffle through the crowd.

Laura was nowhere in sight.

+++

Laura was everywhere. His eyes were filled with her as she rode him. Her breathy moans, her warm smile and bright eyes. Her curly red hair swayed against her skin as she worked them both. Her nails raked down his chest. His fingers dug into her hips.

"Laura."

He always moaned her name, breathed it out like it was a prayer to the frakking gods. Laura-Laura-Laura. This woman was going down in history as the President of the Colonies. This woman, who giggled when she whispered dirty things in his ear and smoked her mountain weed when she lounged on the grass. This woman, whose pretty smiles could convince him of anything. This woman, who was frakking him so hard that his breath clogged in his throat and his eyes struggled to keep from rolling into the back of his head. His hips moved against hers, his hands groping her perfect thighs. It was hot—sweltering, suffocating—and he groaned. His moans were flush against her own. Animalistic grunts of "yeah, yeah that's it."

Laura sucked in her lower lip as she concentrated, teeth biting down and eyes closing with single-minded focus. Selfish focus. Her fingers traveled south, and she touched herself. He loved it.

"C'mon baby," he gasped, smacking her thigh, "C'mon."

Dayton was transfixed, his eyes locked on the site of their joining as her fingers played a practiced allegretto. Her nails skimming his cock every so often as he thrust up into her. Suddenly, Laura surged forward and let out a keening moan. Drowning out the rain. Achingly beautiful. Her smile lit the tent as she rode out her orgasm, laughing tiny strings of curses and gripping his shoulders tight.

"Gods dammit,” Laura panted, "Gods dammit..."

+++

"Gods dammit," Laura sighed, glaring at Adama with eyes fit for cold execution.

Dayton watched them. Spied on them, more like it. An unseen intruder.

A tarp awning surrounded the lively shanty, and Laura stood staring out at the rain-ravaged tent city. Adama stood close by, a thick hand massaging his forehead as he watched her. Droplets of rain dripped from the rim of the covering, looking so gentle against the onslaught of rain that poured mere inches away. Lines on top of lines of pure water. The Admiral's fingers touched her arm, but Laura inched away from him and shook her head. She didn't even favor him a glance.

"Do you realize how utterly childish that was?"

"I didn't mean-"

"Please don't try to rationalize your behavior in there."

"I'm not." Adama's voice was gentle, repentant—a far cry from the growl of competition and the rasp of good-humored patriarchy. His voice was something different entirely. And the sound of the rain beating against the canvas and against the mud ground almost seemed to drown out their voices, which grew low and soft.

Laura sagged against the awning's wooden post, hugging herself tight around her waist. Her thick hair shifted with the night wind.

"You have no right to be jealous, you know," she said, glancing at him.

Adama said nothing. He looked out to the city.

"If I recall, it was _you_ who rejected __me_. _ Remember _?"_

Dayton drew back.

The Admiral grunted, and kicked his boot in the the dirt. "I didn't reject you," he mumbled wearily. He dropped his head to stare at the ground.

"You didn't exactly make an effort to the contrary," she stated, her voice like stone. But as the silence persisted, she let out a tired sigh and allowed her icy shield a moment to thaw. "Look Bill, I know you didn't mean anything by it, but I can't just wait down here while you navel-gaze about what happened," she murmured, "You can't expect me to."

"I don't."

Laura snorted. "Okay."

There was a moment of silence again that grew so thick that Dayton was afraid of shifting his weight. At any rate, he couldn't move away now ... even though as the conversation progressed, he was feeling more and more like a voyeur. More like he was truly infringing on Laura's privacy. But he couldn't move. His curiosity rooted him to the spot.

"I don't regret what happened, Laura," Adama uttered finally.

She looked at him, her ire dissolving. "Neither do I, Bill."

He nodded, his head drooping...a small smile cracking his face. Laura's eyes twinkled—in that way they did—as she leaned forward and smiled.

"I'm going to have to make excuses for you," she smirked.

"What do you mean?"

Laura smiled, her voice feigning disdain. "I said nothing but good things of you Bill, and you had to go and break his arm."

Adama chuckled, digging his hands into his pocket like a schoolboy. "He won, actually."

Laura's eyebrow shot up. "Really."

"You're surprised."

She nodded. "I am."

Dayton frowned, but he couldn't exactly blame her...he was surprised as hell that he won. And he could bet that more than two thirds of those kids in there couldn't quite fathom it either.

"You threw it," Laura accused gently, a small smile making its way across her face. "Didn't you?"

Adama didn't say anything.

"Why?" she asked.

The Admiral took a moment before he shrugged. "Sometimes you catch yourself being an idiot mid-roll."

Laura hummed, nodding her head in amused understanding.

"Looks like it's letting up," he said, looking toward the dwindling rain.

"For now," she replied, pausing, "Where are you staying?"

"I was supposed to stay with Kara, but it looks like I might end up cramping her style," he grunted with a small and austere laugh. Laura's smile grew wider—a glimmer of brightness peeking through.

"With this much alcohol, everyone's going to get lucky tonight." Laura grinned with a small raise of her eyebrows. Trying to be funny.

Adama laughed, but the smile on his face faded into a sad wistfulness before he quickly tempered it. Locked it down. Reigned it in.

And Dayton knew the look. The melancholy. The jealousy. The acceptance. Everything came into alarming focus: the Admiral was in love with her. And Laura, for once in the time that he knew her, was completely blind. Blind to something completely obvious, so glaring—she, who would notice something out of place in the most intricate of patterns. She couldn't see it. Or she didn't want to.

Or maybe, she didn't recognize it at all.

Dayton looked to the ground. The rain was stopping, but she was right ... it would be back. He spared one final look at the two. Laura moved off the post, and laid a gentle hand on Adama's beaten arm.

"Stop avoiding me," she said lightly and with a small smile, "When you're down here, say 'hi' once and a while. Sometimes I miss you, Admiral Adama."

He nodded and looked to the ground again, a smile there and then lost, "I will. I'm sorry I haven't."

Dayton moved back inside the raucous shanty, back into the never-ending noise. As soon as he did, he had to dodge a pilot whose dance moves on the table didn't quite go as he'd planned. He let himself laugh, let himself smile. Even with what he'd just heard, he still had quite a bit to smile about ...

Didn't he?

Laura soon came inside, grinned at him...went to his side.

Adama did not follow after.

+++

Laura flopped down beside him, breathing heavily and blissfully content. Dayton took in a deep breath, knowing he looked silly with his big daffy grin stretched across his face. She hummed and giggled once, before he saw a long leg extend languidly in the air and swiftly fall back down.

"Well, that was nice," she sighed.

"Yeah, it was," he laughed.

Just as he let his eyes close, Dayton felt her sit up. He watched her, smiling at him as she began to collect her clothes. She always did this. Always left. He used to believe what she told him—about being close to the school tent in the mornings ... a pretty lie given with an equally pretty smile. But when her frakking and fleeing became a nocturnal tradition, Dayton lost faith in her story. Tonight, a bitter question crawled into his head: had she done the same with Adama?

Somehow, Dayton didn't think so.

He sat up, watching as she clasped her bra, slipped into her pants.

"Stay," he said, already too late.

Laura lifted her head and smiled apologetically, "You know I can't."

She pulled her sweater over her body, and then promptly sat to lace up her boots.

Always in such a damned hurry, it seemed.

"I won, you know," Dayton suddenly announced as she got to her feet. She looked at him in question.

"The arm wrestle. With the Admiral," he clarified, putting on a smile. "I won."

Laura bent down to kiss him. "I never had any doubt," she lied with a lovely little grin, "I'll see you later." Dayton smiled back at her, watching as she left the tent. Only now did he notice that the rain had long stopped. It wouldn't come back for the rest of tonight.

Dayton kept up his smile even though she was gone. Trying to convince himself of his happiness.

He still had quite a bit to smile about.

Didn't he?

His grin began to ache with the strain of it.


	2. Hollow Talk (September)

There were moments when he considered relocating to New Caprica, moments when the air was balmy and the breeze was cool and the soil smelled like home. Today was one of those days. It hit him as soon as he stepped off the Raptor, his boots crunching on the earth as the sound of laughter carried over the wind. A pleasant din came from the forum and the market, from the lively pockets of friends and the private conversations of lovers as they ambled through the streets. For them, this was already home.

Admiral Adama made his way through the crowds, offering small smiles to the civilians that acknowledged him. It was nice to see them happy. They deserved it. Everybody deserved some measure of happiness.

Duffel bag in hand, he moved against the stream of people to his designated tent. It was reserved for whichever high ranking officer was on shore leave. Saul shared it with Ellen; he would share it with his thoughts.

Inside, the tent was small and devoid of character—humid from the lack of ventilation and fitted with a Spartan arrangement of furniture. In the corner, he spotted a discarded jacket and the ripped packaging of a condom. He chuckled and shook his head. Turns out this tent's other function was to facilitate horny teenagers. Adama tossed his bag aside; the cot expelling an awful screech from the sudden weight, and protesting even louder when he sat.

The muffled sounds of society drifted through the pores of the canvas walls, shadows playing against the tarp as people moved to and fro outside. With a pat to his thighs, he stood and unclasped the buttons of his uniform jacket, stripped off his trousers and unclipped his Admiral's pins. As he shed the weight of the uniform, he sighed at the drop in temperature—the sudden relief, the freedom of movement. It had been a long time since he’d worn anything but standard military gear. He changed into his set of civilian clothes. They felt good, if a bit loose for his liking.

With a few carefully placed fingers, Bill lifted the discarded jacket and slung it over his arm. Before he made to leave, he kicked dirt over the remaining evidence of the teenage lovers and shuffled it about with his feet.

It was mid-afternoon. The sun sat relatively high in the sky. Maybe fifteen-hundred hours judging from the look of it and the general feel of a creeping, lazy afternoon. There wasn't a damned cloud in the sky. Adama made his way toward the forum, his eyes trained on a small crowd emerging from the school tent. It was the older kids this time of day—angst-riddled adolescents who were so anti-establishment that they still went to school at the bidding of their parents. Kids would be kids.

He moved with steady steps toward the tent, coat still in hand. It was nearing the end of the summer season, and judging by Mr. Gaeta's planetary analysis, the autumn and winter months would chill to the bone. This kid would need his jacket soon. It was likely the only one he had.

Some of the teenage students still loitered around the schoolhouse, lighting up shoddy hand-rolled cigarettes and spitting out slurs like their mouths were on fire. Adama felt before he saw the young man staring at him, eyes darting from his face to the coat and then back again. A flinch in his eyes, though neither his stance nor his expression illustrated any of it. The olive-skinned boy looked Tauronese (by ethnic markers if not by his disposition alone) and his arm rested around the waist of a pretty, freckled girl who talked animatedly with another student. Those were the culprits.

Locking eyes with the boy, Adama stopped his advance and tossed him the coat. They regarded one another for a moment before the young man lifted the jacket in thanks and strode off with his girlfriend. Adama watched them leave, a small and wistful smile cracking his face before he peeled open the flap to Laura's school and stepped inside. Everything was dark--a mere outline--as his eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light. The classroom was more vibrant now, as months trickled by and everything took root in the ground. Crayon-colored masterpieces were tacked onto the walls, fallen pencils beneath the loose dirt of the school's floor. He picked one up and placed it on a desk, listening as Laura carried on a spirited conversation with a skinny boy who looked no more than seventeen.

Adama smiled.

They were arguing about politics.

"Well Mr. Magente, I think you have to remember that textbooks written in the past were written about a civilization that doesn't quite exist anymore. Those ideals are no longer entirely applicable. They need to be redefined because we have been redefined, as a society. Textbook democracy is an ideal that we couldn't even reach before the attacks."

"It's impossible to alter those...those codes of conduct for a society born and raised on those ideals, though. People may seem to adapt to change but...it's ...we're still holding on to what we were. There are, I guess, certain curls that can't be straightened...if you get what I mean. So, there are certain rights that can't and shouldn't be altered, no matter the situation."

Bill observed her as she listened intently to the eager young idealist, one hand braced against her desk and the other at her hip. Her hair was different, arranged in a way he had never seen it before. Up. Pieces of that fiery hair drifting about her face and her ears. She wore a gentle yellow—another first—cut like the dress at the Groundbreaking Ceremony. He often struggled to push that dress out of his mind whenever he thought of her—that red dress and its following connotations.

Laura looked lovely—healthy, alive, casually combative as she debated politics with her young student. As the boy continued his argument, Laura's eyes shifted ever-so-slightly and widened when they caught sight of him. He smiled and she returned the gesture for a moment before turning her attention back to Mr. Magente. The young man stuttered and then slowed to a stop when he noticed the intrusion.

"Admiral Adama," he stammered.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Magente."

An amused smile crept along Laura's face. The student looked from her to him and then back at her again, wringing his hands as he did.

"Should I leave?" he asked timidly.

"We'll continue this discussion later, Leonard."

"Okay. Uh, thanks for the talk Madame President."

"Anytime. Have a nice afternoon, Leonard."

With that, her student scurried out of the tent and Laura straightened her posture, gracing him with an easy white smile.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Business or pleasure?"

Adama chuckled, dropping his head. "Pleasure," he admitted.

She nodded. "Good. Come take a walk with me."

+++

The two of them strolled through the market. The languorous sun warmed his skin like a blanket, while his company sustained the warmth of his body with her casual brushes and perfect grins. They ambled from stand to stand, stopping for moments at a time as Laura inspected various fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes, herbs and spices. Some fumbled over how to address her, and he wasn't sure if he was surprised by it or not.

"They don't know what to call you," he said, voicing his observations once they wandered out of earshot of a particularly befuddled trader.

"No. They don't," she laughed softly, "Madame President, President Roslin, Ms. Roslin, Dr. Roslin, Miss Laura, and then you've got the ones that call me Mrs. Roslin. Especially the younger children."

"Don't be too hard on them," he smiled, glancing at her. "I thought you were married until I finally got around to reading your file."

Laura lifted an eyebrow, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Why's that?" she asked.

"With the attacks, I never had the time-"

She smiled. "That's not what I was asking."

Adama nodded. He didn't think so. They stopped, and Laura started inspecting what looked like apples, giving him time to mull over what he wanted to say next.

"I just assumed you were," he muttered finally.

"I did get close," Laura said distractedly, picking up another red-skinned fruit. “Once.”

"Cold feet?"

"No, no. The engagement didn’t last that long,” she laughed, a note of regret to her lilting voice, "I've...I've always been wary about the idea of marriage. I've just seen more of them die than survive."

Adama's own past surfaced with a barrage of memories—broken glass, drunken arguments, the kids sitting at the top of the stairs. He looked to the ground. "I guess you're right."

"My parents divorced when I was twelve," she continued, "My father married his mistress. Had both of my sisters with her. Seemed happy. But ... my family ..." She avoided his eyes with a rueful smile and began to move on from the stand. "You know the old stereotype about the Virgonese. Monogamy isn't in our blood, I suppose."

"You seem to be doing alright with, uh..."

He drew a blank on the man's given name--though he thought of a long string of childish expletives he could use as a replacement.

"Dayton," she supplied, handing over a few cubits to a vendor.

"Right. Dayton."

If there was a slight contempt with which he spoke the bastard's stupid name, Laura didn't call him out on it. She just continued to buy and trade, collecting more than enough for one (or two) people.

"What are you doing for dinner?" she asked suddenly.

"Why?"

"There's this potluck dinner tonight. Dayton's block. A few people. I don't really know them." Laura peered into her satchel, arranging the items inside, "Could be a nice alternative to your noodle diet, if you'd like to come."

Adama looked at her as she raised her head. The breeze brushed her hair across her face and her green eyes were alight with barely muted expectation. Her skin kissed by the steadily falling star— lighting her up like a godsdamned painting. He was rapidly growing aware of the loose quality of his clothes, the lightness of his body and the sweet heat of late afternoon. And all these things battered away at him until his resolve finally slipped.

"I'd love to."

+++

"You invited him to dinner?"

"Is that a problem?" Laura laughed, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as she diced stalks of herbs. Dayton stirred the steaming pot beside her, the heat of it making his face uncomfortably hot and the thick rich smell of it provoking his burgeoning appetite. It was torture.

"I already have you there, intimidating my fellow peasants," he explained, sipping the scalding bisque from the spoon. "If we add Adama to the mix...well, then we're just guaranteeing some kind of...awkward silence."

It was voiced as a joke. But damned if it wasn't true.

Laura snorted, continuing her chopping. "I'm not intimidating." She shrugged. "Bill, maybe. But, I'm not intimidating."

As she leaned over, dropping her spices into the pot, Dayton sampled her exposed neck, wrapping his arms about her waist and pulling her close. "You're very intimidating," he murmured against her skin, dropping a few kisses as he did.

She hummed low in her throat, her smile practically blooming. Sneaking his hands beneath her camisole, his fingers skimmed the soft skin beneath the line of her skirt. "Did I intimidate you?" She asked over her shoulder, her voice taking on that breathy quality that he loved.

"At first," he responded, lips close to her ear, "But I'm a very brave, if foolish, peasant."

Laura's smile deepened, her nails scratching the stubble that marked his jaw as she guided his lips to hers. Her teeth grazed his lower lip, her lips moving against his with fluid purpose and confidence. She knew exactly how to kiss him, how to quickly (and beautifully) incapacitate him. Dayton groaned softly into her mouth, his hands tightening around her waist possessively—hungrily. But just as he was about to completely lose himself (spin her around, pin her against his table, frak her senseless), he heard her throw in a handful of her herbs. The soup hissed, and he broke away from her.

It annoyed him sometimes—how she could multitask. She was never distracted, and yet she was his biggest distraction. A walking diversion. It could drive a man crazy, and he imagined—no, he knew—that he wasn't the only person to suffer this particular insanity. Dayton held onto her though, fingers dallying across her waist. Laura stirred the chowder, bringing the spoon to her lips.

"Mmm," she hummed, setting the spoon aside, "I think it's ready."

+++

His neighbor's laughter spiraled into the air like a plume of cigarette smoke, thin and then gone. She was a woman who craved attention and laughed at menial, mundane things.

Dayton ladled himself more of the bisque and feigned interest in the conversation around the campfire. There were nine of them sitting on fallen tree trunks, counting the bulldog-faced Admiral seated on the opposite side of Laura. And as Dayton anticipated, the unexpected guest caused a bit of a stir. A silent, muted stir...but Dayton recognized the excitement, the nervousness that comes with watching gods walk amongst men.

The conversation started off stilted, over-polite, and needlessly stiff as the food was presented. During that space of five minutes, they all gave him that appreciable smile that said: _My, Dr. Willer, they say the cream always rises to the top. And look at you! Bedding former presidents and making buddies with admirals._

He hated that look.

Soon though, the novelty of his guests started to fade and everyone returned to their bawdy, tawdry selves. They started up a fire as the sun began to dip over the horizon, and enjoyed food and friends. However, the darker it grew and the brighter the fire burned, the less Laura and Adama participated in the over-arcing dialogue. Beside him, Dayton could hear them talking quietly—low, private voices that were sometimes punctuated with his raspy chuckle or her velvety hum. And though Dayton tried to ignore it, he couldn't shake the jealousy. Notes of envy railed through his head.

It was stupid.

He knew it was stupid and childish—human, yes—but still stupid and still childish. Dayton tried to superficially dismiss it all—push it back, push it back like he always did when it came to feelings about Laura or Adama or himself that were...obstructive.

He forced himself to pay attention to his neighbors as one told an animated story about a drunken evening on Leonis involving a stripper and a pyramid ball. Dayton was jogged out of his introspective state when his attention-starved neighbor shot him a question.

"Didn't you help build the pyramid court, Dayton?" she asked, "The one around the market?"

"Yes. I did." He nodded, taking a sip from his spoon. "Can't play anymore, but I love the sport. I was happy to help."

Sophomore year in college, he had flighty dreams of playing professional ball. He wasn't a natural talent at the sport, but he worked hard enough to become a decent player. However, a torn ACL will shatter even the most modest of athletic dreams. He never played the same again.

"I almost went pro," a young man lamented, "Bummed my knee out and that was the end of it."

"Happened to one of my pilots." Adama said, drawing attention instantly.

"Which one?" a pretty young woman asked enthusiastically, "I might know him." She finished with a salacious and self-satisfied smirk.

"Kara Thrace," he deadpanned, spooning soup into his mouth.

"That obnoxious blonde? Married to Sam Anders?"

"Sam Anders," one of the men grunted, "Told a goddamn reporter a few years back that he never cared about winning the cup! What the hell was that? No wonder the C-Bucks started choking!"

"You can't blame one player. The C-Bucks were weak as a whole -- had been for ten years," Dayton argued, waving his hand, "Now, the Panthers. That was a team."

"So say we all," said a gruff voice. Dayton's eyes darted to the Admiral, who lifted his cup in acknowledgment.

Dayton's brow lifted. "Panthers fan, Admiral?"

"I always bet on the Panthers. Never lost enough money to stop."

"Good man." Dayton nodded, smiling at his neighbors. "See? Even the Admiral agrees."

He shared a sparse look with Adama before he turned his face back to the fire and grabbed another piece of bread. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Laura smile at the exchange.

"The Buccaneers formed a frakkin' resistance group on Caprica! Godsdamn national heroes in my book. You see any Panthers do that?"

"Ah, stop grasping at straws, Jimmy!" another man laughed, patting his friend on the back, "Give it up."

The debate continued. Even those that expressed little interest in pyramid dove into the discussion. Dayton kept out of it, while Laura and Adama went back to themselves. He didn't even attempt butting into their conversation; after all, the rational part of him understood why she was giving Adama her undivided attention. She hadn't seen him in nearly two months—not since that muggy night in July when the rain wouldn't stop.

Dayton concentrated on the heat of the fire, the warmth spraying against his face and the backs of his hands. It felt good—however, somehow distant. Like savoring gourmet table scraps.

A piece of wood splintered from the passion that took place inside the flame, and the fire spit out an arrow of bright red sparks. They were brilliant for a moment, before they disappeared into the darkness. Laura's fingers traced the inside of his knee, and he was comforted by the gesture. It was as if she could sense his envy, and knowing that she could tell was both wonderful and horrible at once. Dayton was usually very good at keeping face, but Laura peeled off masks as easily as she peeled the rind from pieces of fruit.

He tried to deter his attention to the chatter of the group, but his ears only picked up the sound of the crackling fire and the murmured conversation between his lover and her confidant. He couldn't help himself.

"I could use some of your stuff right about now," Adama rasped, setting down his wooden bowl. The spoon clattered against the sanded surface. He finished everything he took.

Laura hummed in agreement, and then practically purred, "I have some back at my tent."

The hair on Dayton's neck bristled and his shoulders tensed for a second before he consciously relaxed his posture. A flash of images burst into his imagination—images that taunted him too often: Laura's white torso arcing under Adama's big body, the contrast of their skin and their beauty and their voices. Light and dark, pretty and ugly, small and large, cashmere and sand-paper. The squeeze of her thighs making him pop like a bottle of celebratory champagne.

"I'm going to get more firewood," he announced to the group, earning him a few indifferent nods of acknowledgment. He got to his feet, and avoided Laura's eyes. "I'll be back," he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He set off toward the pile of wood stocked at the timberline.

"I'll join you," Adama said shortly after, rising from his place beside Laura.

Dayton stopped and looked back. "It's alright, Admiral. I've got it."

"Gotta stretch my legs," he rumbled.

Dayton's jaw tightened, but he smiled and nodded his head. "Alright."

Without waiting for him, Dayton continued on toward the dark outline of trees in the distance. The sound of cordial conversation faded away, and the ephemeral heat of the campfire yielded against the night chill. It was quiet but for the sound of their heavy footsteps, trudging toward the old, stretching trees and away from the woman with the red hair and the yellow dress.

He could feel Adama's steps close behind his own. Reserved ... keeping a polite distance, but powerful and sure. Dayton wanted to say something; he wanted to say a million things. To him. To her. To himself. When he reached the woodpile, he shifted through the logs—tucking them in the crook of his arm.

"She's happy," Adama said from behind him—neither an accusation, nor a lament. A statement of fact.

Dayton slowed, slipping a thin rail of wood into the bundle in his arms. "She's trying," he countered, "Being content and being happy are two different feelings, Admiral."

Silence. The chirping of crickets.

Dayton straightened, sparing a look at the austere, mustachioed Admiral. And then he chuckled beneath his breath, looking to the star-speckled sky. He took in a deep breath. "You know what she does? She looks at the sky at night. Just sits outside and stares. I’ve found her like that a couple of times," Dayton murmured, his voice taking on a sad qualitiy of awe, "For hours, she can do it. I don't know about you, but I've seen enough stars to last me a lifetime. And yet, she lays there and watches them like at any moment they'll all start falling for her."

He traced the constellations with his eyes, before looked back down at Adama, who stood there like a bulk of carved stone.

"She told me that," he said, pausing for a moment before he added, "You forget who she is."

Dayton smiled sadly. "I can't forget who she is," he replied, "No one can, no matter how hard they try."

Adama frowned slightly, his eyes darkening.

"You wouldn't understand," Dayton stated, tucking a few more logs in his arm. "You're not inconsequential."

"Inconsequential," Adama repeated the word tonelessly, asking for elaboration without forming a question.

"You and Laura are not normal, everyday people. Your lives are more than a digit on the census. It's a fact of your existence," Dayton explained, continuing to look one-handedly through the lumber. "Have you ever noticed that every mortal that gets mixed up with a god ends up suffering in some way or another?" He paused. "It's hard to live with that sort of knowledge, Admiral."

Suddenly Dayton hissed, catching his finger on a rough patch of wood. He examined the tip, knowing there was a splinter embedded in his skin ... but it was far too dark to see such a small thing. "But that's life, I guess." He smiled half-heartedly at Adama, holding up his injured finger before grabbing one last piece of firewood.

There was a moment of silence, a space between them where they both pondered the night and its hidden complications. In the distance, they could hear the dwindling chatter. They looked toward the bright beacon of blurry light that was the weakening fire, the woman that sat apart from the rest. They both watched her as she gazed at the flame, the wind rustling her hair and the train of her pretty yellow dress.

"She knows?" Adama uttered, "About ... gods and mortals."

"There's very little that she doesn't know," Dayton replied, adjusting his armful of firewood, "Everyone goes through rough patches, Admiral." He then amended with a small smile, "I wouldn't worry about it just yet."

"I'll try not to," he rumbled, a hint of sarcasm underlying his almost expressionless voice.

"You didn't come out here for the exercise," Dayton stated, addressing both the perfectly obvious and the most elusive.

"No. I didn't," the Admiral said, giving away nothing and laying the subject to rest. Dayton nodded, listening to the far off sound of crickets in the forest.

Then Adama cleared his throat and squared his shoulders, starting back toward the campfire without another word. Sparing a single look at the millions of little pin-pricks in the sky, Dayton accepted the unanswerable and cracked a sad smirk—following in silence.

+++

The fire kept going. But soon after Dayton excused himself ("No, Laura. You stay. Enjoy yourself. Catch up."), Adama and Laura agreed to call it a night. After several goodbyes from the collective group, the two of them wandered back through the maze of grungy tents and away from the warm furnace of the campground.

"I'll walk you back to your tent," Adama offered, and she nodded—linking her arm with his.

"Alright."

They ambled toward the general direction of the marketplace. Laura's tent lay a few blocks beyond the schoolhouse, ironically positioned just a few rows from the grounded _Colonial One_.

They walked in companionable silence, listening to the sounds of the sleeping city. Voices muffled from inside canvas walls and the kindling of small, practical flames. They shared a few knowing looks, but hardly spoke a word. It was comforting and quiet and Adama liked it. Bill smiled to himself and took in the shuffling of their feet against the dirt road—the cadence of Laura's breathing. He felt the patches of heat that blossomed wherever her body brushed up against his. Fingers wrapped around his arm, hip bumping against his every now and then. It was a good conversation--a very good conversation.

Bill stole a few looks at her when he knew she wasn't paying attention. The moon looked good on her, just like the sun. The young, brash Viper jock in him wanted to tell her that she was beautiful--because she was--but at the last moment, he swallowed the words that were just moments away from spilling out of his mouth. It was a bad idea to say anything, a bad idea to think anything really.

They were hollow words anyway. Telling a beautiful woman that she was beautiful was like telling a cardinal it was red; pretty women grew up being told they were pretty. He knew for a fact that Laura had heard it countless times before, by people she liked and by people she didn't. They were words better felt than heard.

Bill looked up, taking a breath as he traced the stars. Gray clouds were beginning to stretch across the night sky, blotting out the light. A tiny drop of rain hit his nose.

"Are you staying with Captain Thrace, again?" Laura asked.

"No."

"No?"

"Baltar's finally set up some sort of officer's tent for when Saul and I are on leave." Adama pointed a few yards ahead. "Right there, actually."

Laura's eyes twinkled in amusement as she took in the small, stiff tent. "How is it?"

He shrugged and smiled. "It's alright. Better than dropping in on Kara."

"Oh?"

"I started to feel guilty about being Sam's cockblock."

She laughed. "No self-respecting father-in-law would be anything less."

They paused for a moment, stilling their movement in front of his temporary home.

"You wanna see it?" he asked, sensing her curiosity.

A sly smirk curled across her face and he chuckled. "Come on. I'll show you."

His large fingers quickly untied the flap and he held it open for her. After giving him a cheeky smile, Laura stepped inside and he followed after, laughing beneath his breath.

"Oh," she teased, standing in the middle of the tight, confined space, "Baltar's really out-done himself this time. Very homey." Laura unwittingly backed up to the end of the tent, bumping into the canvas. "And spacious too."

"Listen to this." Adama carefully lowered himself onto the cot, a grin splitting his face as the bed emitted a loud squeal. Laura cringed and brought the back of her hand to the mouth, barely restraining an undignified snicker at his expense. He rose gingerly from the cot, chuckling as it complained.

"You're better off sleeping on the floor," she snorted.

"You're probably right."

Laura wrapped her arms about her waist and watched as he took her advice, unfurling his bedroll out on the ground.

"Might as well leave it when I go back," he huffed, getting to his feet, "Turns out this tent is the designated make-out spot for your students."

This time a burst of laughter escaped. "You're kidding me."

"Wish I was," he said, matching her smile, "Found a jacket and a torn-up condom wrapper when I got here."

"You know, I'm actually more surprised that we still have those floating around." She paused. "What'd you do with the jacket?"

"I was gonna give it to you. To see who it belonged to. But I found its owner outside your school."

"Let me guess. An intense-looking Tauronese boy with a small, freckled girl?"

"How'd you know?" he asked in disbelief.

"Can't keep their hands off each other."

He was pretty sure they weren't the only teenage couple that exhibited that symptom but he didn't question her. She was right, after all.

"What did you say to him?" Laura folded her arms across her chest, creating a tantalizing swell of her breasts that he carefully avoided.

Bill shrugged, looking away from her. "Nothing. Just gave him back his coat."

Laura's grin deepened. "You shouldn't have done that, you know. Now they're just going to keep coming back here."

"At least they have somewhere to go."

Laura hummed, considering him with gentle eyes as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other. "You really are a romantic sometimes," she remarked.

Adama said nothing, just marveled at her smile behind a friendly and platonic face. Her grins tapered off so gracefully—slowly but surely—like sunlight spreading across a dip of land, darkening with a drifting cloud. Lovely.

"I like your hair like that," he commented.

She curled a strand around her finger and then brushed it aside. "Thank you."

They were already on dangerous ground. He could feel the air thickening, the walls of his small tent seemed to shrink. The professor came into his mind for a split second before he pushed his rational, ethical thoughts aside. Damn 'im.

Damn it. Damn it all.

Bill moved toward her, his eyes tracing her face with purpose. He could see the indecision in her eyes--the posed question that neither of them were strong enough to address.

It was all hollow talk, anyway.

His thick fingers traced her jaw. It was a light touch, one that she could easily rebuff. But she didn’t. She leaned in, and met his eyes. When he pressed his lips to hers, it wasn't as gentle. It was marked by urgency, by what he denied himself. His hands moved to her face and he exhaled a loud, shuddering breath that spliced the silence.

Laura opened her mouth to him, clutched him close--her hands burning through the thin cotton of his civilian clothes. She pressed against him like molten fire and whimpered like something far more fragile. His tongue moved against hers, his breathing already ragged in her mouth. His tattered resolve was in a remembered, sultry haze. With a heady and breathless moan, Laura's mouth slid wetly across his jaw—nipping at the bone, kissing the thin skin below his ear.

Adama dug his hands into her thick hair and pulled out her copper pins. Let it fall. He clutched her to him, choking out a half-spoken word when she swept her tongue along the beaten skin of his throat.

"Laura," he whispered. His hands were restless against her body—boldly groping her firm ass, her perfect breasts ... his thumbs stroking the exposed curves of her cleavage, dragging them over her tight nipples.

"Gods," she gasped, her breath hot against his neck.

The scholar was right. Laura was a goddess. And he was the sculptor with eager hands, gathering all the inspiration he could.

Bill bowed his head, swooping down to capture her mouth again. His grip tightened on Laura's waist, pressing her flush against his throbbing penis. He wanted her. He wanted her naked. He wanted that magnolia-colored skin against his—under him, over him, on her knees in front of him.

He needed her. Now.

She panted against his lips as he traced the column of her throat with his fingers, blazing beneath her hair to the delicate bones of her ear. Laura's hand moved between them, melting down his chest and stirring his nerves into a frenzy. She reached low, caressed the bulge in his trousers. Such a light touch. Such a maddening touch.

"I want this," he rasped, the declarative sentence so quiet that it could be mistaken for a growl.

Her eyes were lowered. She didn't look at him, but he heard the words in a whisper: "We both do, Bill."

Adama groaned, bringing his hands to the sliver of exposed waist and pushing under the fabric. His paws smoothed along the hot plane of her stomach, circling her delicate navel. But as soon as his hands began to move toward her breasts, Laura's shook her head and tenderly pulled his hands away from her.

"Laura..."

She took a step backward, and met his confused gaze. "We can't do this. I can't do this," she said with a shaky breath, "He doesn't deserve this."

Anger rose in the pit of his stomach. He grit his teeth, exhaled a deep breath and glanced at the ground—tempering his sudden frustration. "We both want this," he stated.

"Yes. Yes, we do." She nodded. "And I ... I did wait for it, Bill. I did wait."

Bill shook his head. "That's not fair, Laura."

"Come on, Bill," she sighed, bringing a hand to her brow, "You can't expect me..." Laura paused, her stance stiffening. "Dayton's a good man. He is."

Bill ran a hand over his weathered face, and then straightened his posture—quelling the urge to smack something and channeling his anger into the low, brusque tones of his voice. "You don't love him."

Laura's eyes widened at his accusation, hardening. "Oh my Gods," she scoffed, folding her arms. "You can determine that from four hours, Bill?"

"You're not happy."

"At least I'm not running away from happiness. Acting like some kind of ascetic, self-flagellating hermit," she said with a measured, cold rhythm.

"I want to be happy, Laura," Bill ground out.

"No. You don't," she argued, "You want happiness in small doses. Like prescription pills or shots of whiskey. You want something you can feel bad about later because that's what you're comfortable with."

He took in a sharp breath, and looked up at her—meeting her eyes, not letting go. "You don't know how I feel," he spat sullenly.

"Maybe I don't. Fine. But you don't know how I feel either." With that, she moved toward the entrance of the tent. Her hand was on the flap when he spoke, repeating:

"You don't love him, Laura."

Laura smiled, a bittersweet and cruel sort of smile, as she looked at him over her shoulder. "Maybe not. But I sure as hell don't love you either, Bill."

She left, the moon spilling inside the tent before it was cut off with a definitive rustle of fabric.

Bill wanted to tear the place to pieces. In a sickening moment of rage, he wanted to rip her to shreds. But he swallowed his fury, his anger soon replaced by a powerful wash of sadness. It suffocated him, drowned him—flooded his heart. Waterlogged. Saturated. He wanted to apologize, go after her—tell her that he loved her. But he didn't and he wouldn't. Just like he wouldn't tell her she was beautiful.

Maybe, she was right. Maybe he was afraid—a big wuss, a coward.

Nothing but a mortal man.


	3. Overture to a Fire (October)

Braving the chill of New Caprican autumn, her back was to the sparse forest as she desperately tried to steady an uncut log on a decaying stump. One-handedly no less. While one was struggling with the position of the wood, the other wearily clutched an axe that was far too big for her. Too heavy. Too long. Same could probably be said of her sweater.

Bill Adama couldn't help but smile as he watched her huff out a breath of frustration, her skin white but for the pinkish flush that clung to her cheeks—no doubt due to the weather and the exertion. She looked good, albeit pissed off. But then again, he always thought she looked good ( _especially_ when pissed off—though he would never admit to that particular indiscretion.) Laura Roslin, focused on the task at hand, managed to steady the log for a few moments before she grasped the axe in both hands and readied herself.

She was most certainly an amateur. The timber she’d already grappled with was thrown in a pile of awkward asymmetrical pieces. Shavings of wood, obviously from her failed attempts, were tossed carelessly in with the rest of it. Some pieces, with an incomplete hatch mark struggling down the middle, were thrown aside. Quite a bit away. It looked like she had actually _hurled_ them.

Taking a breath, Bill watched as Laura's shoulders tensed in anticipation of raising the too-weighty axe. She could actually hurt herself; so, he figured it was time to intervene.

"You're doing it wrong," he called, treading toward her with a small smile.

Laura's head snapped upward with a look of confusion before quiet recognition settled over her face. She grinned at him—that white, plush smile of hers that always made him feel like he was a giddy schoolboy. She didn't know he'd be planetside today.

“Well, then by all means Admiral," she teased, "Show me how it's done."

Laura offered him the axe with an outstretched hand, the crisp wind catching in her hair. He rounded the stump, the half-frozen ground crunching beneath his boots, and curled his hands around the sturdy helve. She took a step back, crossed her arms over her breast and wore such a daring smirk that Bill could only hope his own half-remembered skills were up-to-par.

"Why are you out here doing this?" he asked, glancing at her as he lowered the blade to the ground. It was rather odd that she was the one laboring in the cold when...

"I couldn't bribe any of the older children to do it for me," she joked with a wave of her hand.

Bill looked back at the stump and his anticipated target, the cragginess of the old wood suddenly becoming the safest thing to look at as he contemplated his line of questioning. He tried to look as if he was preoccupied, forging a strategy. It was all bull of course, and avoiding her made him feel uncomfortably transparent. He knew he was a jealous fool; she certainly didn't need to.

"What about-? Aren't you still seeing that ... Daniel fellow?"

"Dayton," she corrected.

"Right."

He looked at her again.

"Caught a cold." Laura shrugged, giving him an easy grin. "He's been ordered bedrest. Cottle says he should be fine though. He's expected to make a full recovery." She laughed a bit to herself.

 _Oh, thank the Gods for that_ , Bill groused inwardly, barely catching the words when they threatened to meet the open air.

"Trust me, when he does, he'll be the one doing the grunt work," she continued.

He smiled at her despite it all, meeting her gaze and sharing it with her for a few quiet moments before she cleared her throat and gestured to the stump.

"I do believe you were going to correct my technique?" She lifted a challenging eyebrow.

Sparing a glance to her haphazard pile, he chuckled. "There was a technique to this?"

"There's a technique to everything I do, Bill." Laura smirked. "I was hoping you'd have picked that up by now."

Bill looked away from her hale knowing smile and her pale, equally omniscient eyes. Since that night of the Groundbreaking Ceremony (fuzzy and soft-lit in his memory), they had been doing this: acting out this pleasant/painful charade of friendship. They were each dealing with it in their own ways--he by brooding, she by Dayton (he supposed). It was a stupid fancy--believing if he pushed them far enough way, the feelings wouldn't come crawling back and nestle ever further into his thoughts. It always seemed like it was affecting him more than her though. Maybe because she had someone to serve as a distraction and he definitely did not. Maybe it was because she was a politician. A good one. Too good. Bill was sure that she could see the vulnerable unhappiness that he felt radiating off of him in waves.

The Admiral looked down at the dead, uneven stump and the log perched warily on its head. And he got back to business.

"First off, this axe is too big for you," he warned.

"Well that can't really be helped, Bill," she pointed out, sweetly cocking her head.

"Suppose you're right. In that case, legs shoulder-width apart," he grunted, doing the very thing he instructed. "Firm grip. Pick your spot on the wood. Make sure it's not near a knot."

She nodded her head in understanding.

"Pull it back over your head and your shoulder," he breathed, demonstrating. "Upper hand up near the head."

"Alright."

Gripping the axe, Bill shot a glance at her. "When you bring the axe down make sure it's quick and sure. Slide your hand back down nice n' easy and aim."

Speculating the timber, Adama took a breath and flexed his grip. With a determined breath, he swung the blade downward and sent a confident blow toward the log. His hand slipped down the heft and the axe head sent a sharp crack through the stubborn wood, cleaving the thing in half. The two pieces splintered apart and fell to the wayside, tumbling to the frozen forest floor. Bill squared his shoulders. It was a perfect hit. A smile threatened to break across his face. He couldn't help but admire his handiwork. And neither could she, which sent a shot a pride right through his spine.

Laura circled the stump and grinned at him, bright and sure. She nodded her head. "I have to say..." Laura admitted, collecting and admiring the symmetrical halves. "That was quite impressive."

Before he could set down the axe, she deposited the firewood and picked up a fresh piece of wood. "Though...I may have missed a few of those points." She smirked, holding out the new log innocently. "Mind showing me again?"

He let out a low laugh. "You're trying to pawn your work off me, aren't you?"

She shrugged, quirking an adorable smile as she lifted her eyes to the sky. "Maybe." Laura eyed him. "Are you saying you won't?"

With a small grin, he took the piece from her and tried to settle it on the stump. The surface itself was uneven, and the hack-n-slash job done to the piece of wood wasn't helping either. He grumbled a bit, struggling to balance the next piece. Laura leaned in toward him with a playful smirk.

"Having trouble?"

"This chopping block is shit," he muttered.

She loosed a good-spirited laugh. "Indeed." Then she quieted, humming beneath her breath as she inspected their target. He wouldn't admit to how much he loved the sound, but he couldn't quite help the involuntary effects it had on him. "Here," Laura finally declared, "I'll steady it for you while you swing."

Immediately, she sunk to her knees in front of the stump and put her hands on either side of the wood. Her palms were firm and he let go, staring down at her in surprise. She merely looked up at him with a small smile, and made a motion toward the axe with her head.

"You sure you want to do that?" Bill asked tentatively, taking up arms again and staring down at her. She nodded nonchalantly, penetrating him with her quiet stare. "I trust you," she said simply, letting the words hang before she lifted a shoulder and broke the tension before it was allowed to accumulate, "But, if you happen take off one of my hands, I think I'm entitled to taking one of yours, Admiral."

Adama laughed. "Deal."

Now, each swing had to be perfect. Oddly enough, he was up to the potentially maiming challenge. Perhaps, it was her pacifying smile or the way she seemed to think nothing of it. Laura didn't look as if she harbored any doubt in him at all; it assuaged Bill's nerves and calmed him so quickly that it took him aback. When she looked at him and bid him to go on, the biting air had no effect on his warm and contented skin. He'd chop the whole bundle of wood if she wanted him to, if she cast him some of those ambrosial grins—pretty and fine and thermal—and sweetened the deal.

Bill raised the axe, watching her once-unworked fingers tap against the dull and rugged bark expectantly. Despite the cold weather, a bead of sweat gathered on his temple as he eyed his target and swung, surefooted and loud. The short piece of lumber split in two, each half held in her hands.

"Beautiful," she praised, throwing the new pieces into her modest pile.

Bill Adama had been thinking the same thing, though the subject of such awe differed from her own. He fetched another piece of firewood, she wordlessly steadied it, and he chopped it in two...his eyes never leaving those that stared up at him.

They cut wood, toiled out by her solemn timberline until New Caprica's star hung low on the horizon and not even Laura Roslin's smile could heat Bill Adama's bones.

It was an evening well spent, even though it was an overture to a fire that he would not be around to enjoy.

But for now, it was enough. And it was all he would ask for.


	4. The Plant that Never Blooms (January/April)

He retched and his cough tasted of blood.

"Are you alright?" She practically yelled in his ear as they sat on the stands. Sam Anders scored the halftime goal, and the crowd went absolutely wild. Laura leaned close to him, her hair hanging heavy about her cold-flushed face. She rubbed his back in a comforting circle as a small, residual cough sputtered from his mouth.

"Fine. I'm fine." Dayton swallowed and forced a smile, brushing a hand at the sandy scruff that dotted his jaw. It was getting too cold to shave in the morning; so, he decided to grow a beard. Maybe he would like it. Dayton wheezed a bit, clearing his throat. "Just letting the damn thing run its course." His voice was hoarse, completely betraying him.

Laura scrutinized him, her hand drifting down his arm and then back up again. "Cottle said to take it easy until the cough lets up." She patted his forearm.

Dayton laughed weakly, "You kidding? This is taking it easy!" He slipped his fingers between hers. "Don't worry." He smiled. "I'm planning to get a second opinion, anyway. That Cottle...he's a little grizzled..."

Laura grinned, shaking her head and turning back to the game. "You should be in bed."

"You willing to join me?"

She gave him a sly smirk. "You don't have the strength for that."

Dayton chuckled, stifling another cough. "You're probably right." He looked back to the game. "You're probably right ..."

Damn, he hated the winter.

+++

It was spring. Days after the groundbreaking ceremony, and everyone was still high on lofty dreams of structure and safety. Idyllic hopes for white picket fences and quiet, pastoral lives. Those dreams spurred the people to work. Tents sprung up with a speed and efficiency that rivaled the first couple days of settlement, and even the smallest of children itched to lend a helping hand. Dayton Willer was among those buzzed from the intoxicating anticipation of tomorrow. He eagerly laid out the groundwork for the pyramid court, pitching in to build the bleachers and construct the goal posts. Playing with the young bucks.

Afterward, while the rest of the boys reaped the rewards of their work with a beaten old ball, Dayton honored his profession and sidled over to the site of the schoolhouse.

Rumor had it that Laura Roslin had taken up the reigns personally, overseeing the entire project and collecting former educators to create some sort of curriculum and a loose work schedule for her volunteers. It was mostly young, fresh-faced kids that answered the call. Idealistic, apple-cheeked teachers and early education majors. Dayton, for one, enjoyed his switch of occupation. Surprisingly, he loved the hard labor (blood, sweat, tears) and the tangible results of working with his hands. In retrospect, he might have been more happy as a carpenter or a boat builder back on Picon ... and the realization made him mourn for lost possibilities. And all those cubits he'd pissed away studying for his doctorate...

She delegated tasks with a simple clipboard, flanked by a young woman. The girl was dark-haired, jubilantly cradling an infant. Roslin smiled as the breeze whipped her hair, running a finger along the baby's cheek. The young woman gazed at her affectionately, as if she were only half-real. The small interaction made Dayton wonder if the two were together. He had to admit, the idea of it was rather ... intriguing. An involuntary smirk flickered across his face. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about the sinuous line of Laura Roslin's spine or intertwined bodies with pink-capped breasts—even though his mind went there and preferred to stay there no matter what he wanted.

The girl's big brown eyes instantly latched onto Dayton as he approached. Her smile was vibrant, wonderfully hopeful as she bounced the gurgling baby against her ribs.

"Answering the call of duty?" she asked brightly. Roslin turned, fixing her eyes on him, and he felt his pulse quicken like a twelve year old boy clutching pulled dandelions in his hand.

"That's the plan," Dayton responded confidently, smiling as he slowed to a stop. "A little birdie told me that you needed some extra help."

Extending his hand, Roslin quickly shook it with a cock of her head and an exceedingly polite grin. Her skin was soft—delicate, white, unworked—and he liked the warmth of it in the brief moment he touched her hand.

"Dayton Willer," he said, introducing himself.

Laura Roslin eyed him up and down with a small smirk. Her eyes moving in practiced, speculative lines. His skin prickled under the scrutiny, and he felt the strongest urge to scratch the nape of his neck or shift his weight. He resisted.

"Can you build a table?" she asked with a pointed gaze.

"Just say the word,” Dayton affirmed with an easy grin, "I'll take care of you."

+++

"You don't have to take care of me,” he coughed, sitting up in bed. He leaned against the thick canvas behind the head of his cot, watching her as she rolled another blanket over his body.

"You're still sick," she said, her voice muffled as she tucked the blanket beneath him, "Who else is going to take care of you?"

"Laura..."

"Everyone on this damned block is sick,” she huffed, avoiding his eyes as she straightened his too-thin comforter. Her avoidance was deliberate—the flustered, manic way in which she tidied his bed and poked the log in his makeshift furnace. Laura moved about his tent like an agitated bird. She clutched herself—cold or worried, he couldn't tell.

"Are you feeling alright?" Dayton asked, knitting his brow. He took in her pale skin, the tired lacquer that had recently settled over her eyes. "Are you feeling sick?"

Laura slowed to a stop, her head slumped. "No...no." She leaned against the table and tossed him a weak smile. "Just a feeling. It's been bothering me all morning."

"A feeling?"

"Just a vague feeling. That today isn't going to be a good day. I can't place it," she admitted with a small wave of her hand, trying to fling away her intuition with a single motion. Laura shook her head with a self-deprecating smile. "It's silly. Really. I don't know why I'm letting it get to me."

He started to speak, to reassure her, but instead of words there was a racking cough. He hunched over as the painful wheeze took its course, the sound of his sickness drowning out the morning. She sat beside him with water and he took it in his trembling hands, the frigid metal of the cup numbing his fingertips as he drank and drank and drank. So much water, and yet his throat still felt parched and wanting. She watched him as he fell back onto the bedding, dragging a hand over his sallow face. A low, frustrated groan ripped from his throat.

"You have to go to school," he choked out, his eyes creaking shut.

"Maya can take of it."

Dayton's smile was thin. He felt weary—weak. His body burned and froze and melted in the most agonizing way. For Hades' sake, he couldn't be sure whether the sweat that dotted his brow was from fever or the approaching winter. It killed him—the uncertainty. "Go to school. I'll catch some sleep."

She scoffed, blowing a long piece of hair from her face. "It's too cold to sleep."

Dayton laughed—his voice painfully hoarse, even to his own ears. "You haven't got a blanket on your face." He smiled, fingering the beard covering his jaw.

"No ..." Laura rolled her eyes upward. "I have all this." With a smirk, she shook her wild mane of hair, growing more unruly by the day. Her smile faded quickly, as did the light in her eyes. Such transient brushes with happiness these days. With the encroaching winter, it was more difficult to fake happiness. No solace for the burdened mind—only frost and stinging showers, a sharpness that maimed the summer's hazy and heady blur. Erased it from sensory memory.

Dayton took a strand of her hair between his thumb and index. Such a rich red—even this small amount of color could go a long way. The illusion of warmth. Just enough so that he could recall the feeling of a sultry afternoon, the tacky intimacies of skin on skin. Of new things, of a nascent fire.

He could see the worry behind her eyes, the way she inspected his face. He looked like hell—a Viking resting on his flaming boat. Pale. Uncouth. Sore and expectant.

He held his fire in his hand, and let it go. Let it fall back against her heart.

"I'll see you this afternoon," she said, placing his tin cup beside his cot.

Dayton watched as she straightened and moved toward his tent flap, the bright light moving across the ground.

"Laura," he grunted.

She looked at him.

"It's not going to be a bad day," Dayton insisted, leaning back on his pillow—closing his eyes. "Trust me."

An hour later, he woke to the shrill screams of Cylon raiders as they streaked across the January sky.

+++

They called him "the table man”--the adult curiosity that worked outside, every day for the past week. They greeted him when they entered and said their goodbyes when they left—little hands and innocent smiles. Small gestures that he stored in his pocket for when the sun got too hot and the breeze too weak and he had to remind himself why he took on the task in the first place.

He liked recess the most, the ambiance of playing children was a nice (if somewhat distracting) motivational tool. Every now and then during the thirty minute break, Dayton would glance over at the group of children.

Today, some girls sat in the sand and made due with rag dolls and a group of boys argued over what to do with a precious ball. Others zipped about playing a strange variation of tag.

As much as he hated to admit it, his gaze always deviated toward the schoolteacher during these momentary breathers—the former president, an alleged prophet, and the owner of an especially fine pair of legs. These moments of weakness would be easier to manage if the rest of her wasn't equally as fine. Dayton's admiring gaze never lingered too long. He never liked to dwell on things he couldn't have.

But today, his eyes hesitated for a moment too long … taking in the way that the breeze ruffled her skirt and played with her hair, the way her breasts kissed over the top of her folded arms and he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to li…

"Mother fr-!"

The sharp pain shot through his thumb like a barb of lightning—sizzling his nerves and trailing a thrumming ache in its wake. His finger, now red, pounded in time with his heart.

"You were gonna say a bad word," came a small voice behind him. Dayton looked over his sun-burnt shoulder to see a young boy standing behind him as he nursed his pounding thumb.

He smiled thinly. "Hey, sport."

As much as he enjoyed them in the environment, Dayton wasn't particularly good with children and he knew it. In fact, he couldn't recall the last time he’d spoke to someone under the age of nineteen in the last seven years. He never married, never settled down for his white fence and blushing bride. He wasn't ever a father to the child he’d mistakenly fathered a few years back. With this boy's cherubic face, staring up at him, Dayton experienced a sudden rip-tide of guilt.

The boy shifted from one foot to the other. "You're the table man."

Dayton nodded, placing his damned hammer down on the ground. "Yes. I am." He stood, brushing off the dirtied fronts of his pants. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"Miss Maya says you're gonna have 'em done in a week," the kid said.

Dayton scanned his progress—the heaps of plank lumber, the table legs that still needed carving— and he sighed, unconsciously bringing a hand through his hair. "That's the plan," he reported. To say he was skeptical was an understatement. A week. Depending on the weather and if he could haul some serious ass ... even another half a week was a hopeful estimate. Biting off more than he could chew, as always.

The boy took a deep breath, almost akin to a sigh. "I asked her if I could help you but she said I was too little. She said I would hurt myself with your tools. But ... but I think she'll let me help you if you tell her it will be alright. You have to tell Miss Maya, though," he stammered. "You can't tell Miss Roslin. She'll never let me play with the hammer and stuff."

Dayton grinned. "I'll see what I can do."

"You've been caught, Mr. Wolfe."

The young boy whirled around to see his teacher, standing like a pillar of authority with her arms crossed over her chest—brandishing a smile that scolded in silence.

"I wasn't gonna do anything, Miss Roslin. I swear," he pleaded.

She motioned toward the playing field, "I hear Aaron and Paul are going to set up a game of dodgeball."

Alex’s eyes grew wide. "I love dodgeball."

Roslin grinned. "Then you better hurry up before they start picking teams."

The boy scampered off, waving toward the small group. "I wanna play! You guys, I'm gonna play!"

And that left the schoolteacher standing next to the table man, whose damned heart began to pound to the familiar beat of an unrequited crush. Dayton swallowed, cradled his thumping thumb. The gnawing pain was attention-starved.

"He seems like a good kid," he said, nodding toward Alex. Roslin wasn't looking at him, her attention directed toward the growing number of children organizing the ball game.

"He is," she said softly, "They all are."

Roslin caught his eyes then, smiling oh-so-gently and catching him off his guard. Looking so indescribably soft. So easy, so bright. Her gaze darted to his hands. "Did you hurt yourself?"

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I...uh...got distracted," he said, flubbing his words and feigning nonchalance with a shrug and a boyish grin, "You know how it is."

She was dimly amused. "You're coming along, though."

He turned to his work. "Two down. Four to go. I'm getting there, anyway."

In truth, he’d volunteered for the job with little experience in the craft. But he was a quick learner and able to learn by himself. The completed tables awaited the final touches. Sanding, a homemade varnish. They looked sturdy. Reliable. He was glad to build them for her.

"You look hot," she breathed.

There was a brief moment of stupid, adolescent fantasy before Dayton suddenly remembered that he was shirtless and the afternoon was blazing. A sheen of sweat covered his skin and the peaks of his shoulders were glazed a bright pink. Of course he looked...hot.

"Yeah. I guess I am," he laughed, throwing up his arms.

"I can get you a glass of water," Roslin offered politely, angling toward the schoolhouse.

Dayton's smile widened. "Thank you. That'd be great."

And he didn't think he was imagining the small amount of mischief that ignited in her eyes.

+++

She brought him water and stayed with him until curfew--a single siren that called through the cold, like a ferry through fog. Laura ignored it. It was her passive rebellion. And Dayton couldn't help but smirk that the one time she chose to spend the night was when he was sick with pneumonia and she was sick with spite.

Laura breathed a thick cloud, and her eyes were dark as she played nurse. For the past couple of weeks, she’d taken care of him like he was an ailing child when really she was trying to harvest a frost-bitten husk. Cottle came by while she was at school—checked him out. There were no more antibiotics and Dayton knew from the Doctor's detached inspection that he wasn't getting any better.

His immune system had been weakened from the common cold, and the pneumonia latched onto him with iron teeth—wouldn’t let go until he stopped thrashing. Cottle explained this to him, prescribed him plenty of rest and fluid intake when they both knew that at this point it was all a game of chance. A coin flip with mother nature—dependent on her mercy. And the season was hungry, thirsting for hot blood and infamy. Everyone was coming down with something, and many were succumbing to their illnesses.

His temperature wouldn't break. Night after night he was caught in some sick, sallow haze. Stupid fever dreams that came over him like spells—half-remembered images of things like swans with green feathers and plaster masks that lined cold channels. His mouth was dry, his stomach nauseous. Sticky and freezing, chattering teeth and a sweating upper lip.

Dayton coughed, leaned over his cot in an attempt to vomit but nothing came out but a dry, strangled sound.

Laura sat at his table, staring at him, and trying to hide her shivering frame. She was getting too skinny. And judging by her eyes, Dayton knew he looked as gaunt and sunken as he felt.

"You don't have to stay," he croaked, twisting in his bedding and clutching his abdomen.

"It's too late now," she murmured. "Curfew."

"Where are you gonna sleep?" he asked, a sudden twinge of irritation seeping into his voice. "I'm not gonna let you come down with this thing."

Dayton knew he was right, and Laura knew he was right too. But, she sat there like a stubborn little chit and offered him nothing at all.

"It's only a matter of time until I catch something," she said bitterly, her stomach growling. "Besides, you're always coming down on me for not staying with you. I'm making amends."

Dayton knit his brow together and took in the stale air through his nostrils. "I didn't ask you to mother me, Laura. So, stop acting like I'm some Godsdamned obligation," he wheezed.

She shook her head, didn't even bother to look at him as she set her chin on the heel of her hand. A period of silence passed, punctuated by the heartless rustle of the wind outside and the disembodied voice that sounded over the settlement.

"Why don't you ever stay with me, Laura?" Dayton coughed, a jaundiced gleam to his eye.

Laura glanced at him wearily. "Please, don’t start."

Why shouldn't he start? When the bastard had abandoned them (and her) and he was going to die of this frakking pneumonia anyway.

"You spend the night with Adama when you frakked?" he snarled, "Does he give it to you hard enough that you have to sleep with him afterward? Is that the trick?"

Her eyebrow didn’t even twitch. She just gave him that steely, cool-as-nails stare. She gave nothing away, and Gods…it angered him so frakking much. He laughed--laughed as much as he could.

"It's all true, isn't it?" Dayton sneered, his chapped lips cracking with his cruel smile. "Just tell me, Laura. Just tell me you two frakked. I want to hear it. I want you to admit it to me."

They paused as the heavy symphony of clunking metal moved past the tent. Centurions on patrol. Spotlights sprayed across the camp, shooting spears of white light through the canvas walls--an ever-present invasion of privacy.

Laura looked away from him with a forlorn shake of her head, "I don't owe you any kind of explanation, Dayton," she said softly.

"If Adama retired, settled…you wouldn't be here right now," he stated simply. "You know it. I know it. He's the only one not sure of it."

"I know more than you think I do," he said, "And I can see it … I see it when I hold you, when you dress … when you leave." He cleared his throat. "I couldn't back out. I didn't want to. Maybe, I should have when I realized."

Laura rose from her seat and shuffled to his cot, sitting down on the edge as the wind howled with discontent. She placed the cool back of her hand against his clammy forehead, and despite it all … he relaxed into his bedding. "I spent the night with Bill on Founder's Day," she admitted quietly, confirming what he already knew. "Neither of us were sober." A small smile edged onto her ivory-colored face. It ended as quickly as it started.

"But never after that," Laura said, " When push came to shove, I couldn't do that to you." She nodded once, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and avoiding his searching eyes.

"Thank you." Dayton breathed, forgiving any and all discrepancies with honest eyes, rough fingertips trailing the chilled line of her jaw.

+++

Long after the tables were complete, they talked during recess—watching as the children ran and ran and ran. Playing tag—little boys chasing after little girls chasing after little boys. They talked of stupid things like acquaintances do. The warm weather, the budding trees. The startling parallels between teenagers and monkeys. Vacation spots that no longer existed. Playful disagreements and enthusiastic commonalities—a certain and unmistakable flirtation garnishing their easy conversations. Two charmers caught in the gust of an equally charming spring.

At first, he assumed she was merely indulging him—flirting for sport. The more he got to know her the more he realized that flirting for the hell of it was something she used to do quite often and it was something she was particularly good at. He used to do the same thing; however, his charisma had gotten him into more hot water than out.

When he was around her, his imagination would veer. He wanted her so badly that it was beginning to compromise his ability to hold a conversation. It became difficult to remain so passive with her when night after frakking night, he thought about what it would be like to taste that coy, porcelain grin or dig his hands into that flaming hair. It warmed him up plenty just imagining it and he imagined it so much that it became a preoccupation.

His desire was becoming a disorder.

So, one night he took action. One night, it became too much. One night, when the air was sultry and the workload too high, Dayton stayed behind to keep Laura company and to help her grade those neatly stacked reports.

The night was silent but for the cheeping grasshoppers, and the sandy sound of paper sliding against paper. Eyes catching eyes, smiles matching smiles. Dim, gorgeous light cast by the swinging lamp-lights. They spent the night dancing around this bashful haze, until the first thirty minutes of the witching hour, when they finally finished and rose to leave.

As they moved to the front of the tent, Laura started to thank him before he hushed her, the elegant silence resuming.

Her cheek was hot against his palm, the column of her neck smooth and untouched. And he pinned her, with the slightest shift of his leg, between his body and the edge of one of the tables. The gently swinging lamp cast shadows over her face, illuminating all her colors from one instant to the next.

Laura's eyes went wide at his touch, but then softened quickly, like the gaze of a long-legged doe. Before she could think to protest, Dayton dipped his head and kissed her--scooping up her chin, his fingers tracing the curve of her jaw. It was a brash move (a potentially stupid move) but he didn't care. He weaved his fingers into that lovely hair and felt an almost feverish glee at the feel of her hands drifting up his spine, nails digging into the grooves of his shoulder blades and beckoning him closer, inviting him in as she parted her lips. There. A hot and ephemeral sigh.

Dayton hefted her onto the table, smiling triumphantly against her mouth as she let out a small titter of laughter.

From then on he kissed her often, in the market or beneath the pyramid bleachers or when the sun was bright, because he always wanted to. Because he always could.


	5. Armagnac (March)

The knock on the hatch disrupted the silence of his quarters, the first shred of quiet since the great blaze of the Exodus. The Admiral massaged his brow and slowly got to his feet, the worn leather cushion of his chair sighing at the absence of his heft. So much work needed to be done, and there was so much weight plastered behind his eyes. It didn’t feel like he’d slept in two days. Spinning the wheel in one fluid motion, it opened with a long creak to reveal the small form of Laura Roslin, a delicate smile curled across her face. He was genuinely surprised.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey.” He moved aside. “Come on in."

Laura nodded. “Thank you.”

Adama closed the hatch after her, watched her measured steps as she took in the space of his quarters—gradually becoming reacquainted with the room she once knew so well.

He hadn’t seen her since early December, when the land was as grey as the sky. Even the fire then seemed dull and lifeless and not as warm. It had been a long time and she was definitely a sight for sore eyes, even with her torn sweater and ill-fitting pants—the old boots far too big for her feet. He had only heard of her survival through second-hand, eye-witness accounts. But he never doubted them, never doubted her ability to make it out of that hellhole. He expected it, anticipated it, and here she was—holding herself about the waist, a faint smile warming her face as she looked at him from over her shoulder. Alive and healthy and safe.

“Want a drink?” he offered, sidling over to his half-full decanter.

“Please,” she sighed in relief, a grin breaking across her face.

Laura relaxed against his couch and settled against his cushions, thanking him as he handed her a snifter and sunk down beside her. The leather groaned beneath him. They were silent for a few moments, sipping the amber-colored liquor with pensive expressions—staring, but blind, to the bookshelf that lined his wall and his table with topography maps still splashed across its surface.

Finally, she spoke. “You shaved.” Laura met his eyes with a little amused smirk—her gaze darting to his lips.

“Yeah. I did,” he responded simply, cradling his glass between his forked legs. Laura said nothing and took another drink, staring forward.

He sloshed his drink about, looked into the glass with a tired stare. Out of his mouth, a deep and long-held breath, as he set the cup on his trunk and relaxed against the leather. He folded his hands in his lap, and only enjoyed the sight of her from the corner of his eye—where he could deny ever looking at all. “It’s good to see you, Laura,” he rasped.

“I’ve missed this,” she mused quietly, as if she hadn’t heard him. “This place. This couch. Incandescent lighting. Walls. Plumbing. Your Libran rugs.” Laura finished off her brandy and placed her glass aside. Her thick red hair veiled her face, her profile barely visible but for the line of her nose.

Bill cleared his throat, remembering his last visit to the surface. He had trucked one of those Libran rugs underneath his arm, trudging through the first snowfall with a lump seated in his throat. It was a peace offering. A gift, a concession to worry. He didn’t want her to freeze. Laura accepted the gift, though she only used the carpet for the school. Not for herself, not how he intended (wanted) it to be used.

Now, there was a conspicuous bare patch on his iron-plated floor and there wouldn’t be another carpet to replace it. It was gone. And the void was a constant reminder of where he’d tried and where he’d failed. Where there was too much space to begin with.

“Lieutenant Gaeta organized a manifest,” he mentioned, barely a murmur. “A rough list of people that pulled through. Census went straight down the gutter.”

A haunted look eclipsed Laura’s face, her eyes still and her shoulders tense. She didn’t say a word, her fingers elegantly rising and falling against her knee.

“Shortly before the invasion, there was an outbreak of pneumonia. You may remember,” she mumbled, glancing at him. “People were dying so rapidly that the Cylons just collected the bodies with the trash. Dumped all of them in the ravine we used...as a landfill…” Her head slumped, and she shook it back and forth, unable to continue.

Bill swallowed. His name wasn’t on the list. Dayton Willer—that golden-colored manchild with the over-confident grin. It was sobering to picture him tumbling like an emaciated ragdoll into a ditch. He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sorry, Laura,” he whispered.

She sniffed, shrugged, and smiled through her gloss of sadness. “Hmph. That’s life …”

Laura hesitated. “Dayton and I...had difficulty toward the end. I wasn’t what he wanted me to be and he wasn’t who …” She stopped, smiled again. “I guess it was the spring. All that promise. I guess I got a little caught up in it all. Wanted it to be true.”

“We all did, Laura,” he said, diverting his eyes—as guilty as the rest of them. “In one way or another.”

She grinned wistfully, “Everyone’s in love when they’re drunk, in one way or another.”

He was drunk once, a sort of rare intoxication from illegal and forbidden fruits. Bill remembered her red skirts as they fluttered about her legs. The night. A brilliant smile tossed over her shoulder and a throaty laugh--a playful, beckoning finger. There was something wonderful and foreign in her green eyes that night. His nerve endings fizzled, and his legs were fluid as he followed her. He felt light and he felt young and he felt free.

They were more than a little tipsy, more than a little careless. She dragged him, laughing, to the ground. Fresh sprung grass pressed into his knees; a soft April body pressed into his chest. Far off music (raw strings and animal-hide drums) and the natural sounds of the timberline—the watery reflection of distant fires in her stare. It was odd and indulgent, like some carnival hidden in the trees.

She whispered things through laughter: how much she wanted him, how he drove her wild. She showed him, guided his hands to places he’d always wanted to touch and pulled him over top of her. Rubbed against him in ways that had his eyes damn near rolling to the back of his head. Laura looked near luminescent without her dress, underneath the stars. Her skin was almost as white as a cherry blossom—his hands running down her torso, his hands browned like virola resin.

He whispered nonsensical lines of poetry in her ear, heard her amused and heard her change. A short series of high-pitched sighs, heaving breath in his ear as he damn near plowed her into the earth. Bill slurred a wet confession against a breast. What he felt when he was drunk, and what he felt when he was sober.

Especially, when he was sober.

She didn’t say anything back and he spent the next two months avoiding her. Humiliated, scared, unsure.

Everyone’s in love when they’re drunk.

She offered a way out, an agreement to seal away those memories of drug-hazed New Caprica. Dismissing everything as a product of good weed and strong booze—of silly behavior and punch-drunk jealousies. Hands on his knees, he rose from the couch, and felt her eyes on his back as he poured himself another drink. He wasn’t going to disrespect his feelings by lying about his honesty. But he of all people knew that good memories were compromising memories. An agony when times were bad.

Didn’t matter.

“I meant what I said,” he rumbled, almost defensively, as he took a swig from his glass. The alcohol coiled like a growing flame in his stomach, and he liked it there—the hot curl in his stomach was like a sleeping cobra and it made him feel safe.

Laura said nothing, and allowed the moment to pass. Her elbows rested on her knees, and her hands were clasped together.

“New Caprica was a sham. A mirage,” he muttered, bringing the glass to his lips. “Doesn’t mean what happened there wasn’t any less real. True.”

She breathed out. “I know.” Laura shivered. “I suppose the wound is just too fresh.”

He grunted in understanding.

She stood and wandered toward his bookshelf. Paused. “Bill, I've said some things to you that I shouldn’t have..."

Adama interrupted her gently. “You don’t need to apologize, Laura.”

Looking at him, she merely nodded and gave him a slightly uncomfortable smile as she looked to her intertwined hands. “Okay.”

He wanted to embrace her, offer her some sort of comfort or solace. Some kind of warmth beyond liquid happiness—Gods knew, he needed it too. But, she was right—all of their wounds were too fresh. So easily opened and so sore that even a hug would squeeze more blood. He’d wait, just as he guessed she would wait, for that time when New Caprica was just a scar. One with a story, one with a worthwhile memory—good and bad, confusing and clear. Staying away only got him cold, and getting too close got him burned—third degree, blisters and all.

Time. All she needed was time, even though it felt so godsdamned long already. He was tired of waiting on time. He was tired of waiting on her, but he would. Frakking hell…he would.

“I guess I should go,” Laura said, shifting on her feet.

He swallowed. “If that’s what you’d like.”

She gave it a moment’s thought, before she nodded gently. “I think that would be for the best.”

As Laura moved toward the hatch, Bill put a few fingers on her arm—stopping her. “I really am sorry, Laura,” he stated. “About Dayton.”

Her smile was forced and lopsided. “So am I.”

He nodded, and then started to turn—heading back to his paperwork and the two cold mugs of coffee that sat untouched on his desk.

“Bill.”

He turned back, and caught her eyes—an intensity there that he recognized in moments when Laura’s words conveyed everything and nothing, stilling the universe with a perfectly placed syllable.

“Thank you.”

Words so seemingly benign that their intricacy could be missed, the labyrinth on every letter so small that you had to be looking for it.

Bill smiled. He looked for it, and he found it, and he realized every curve and every design. And she was thanking him for everything, thanking him for nothing.

“I’ll see you soon?”

Laura smiled as the hatch opened, her head tipping on its side. “Yes, Bill,” she promised, “You will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Officially, this was the ending of the fic. 
> 
> However, if you want more of this universe, the next three chapters are my 'take it or leave it' addendum. (And yes, one of them includes the tagged 'threesome.')


	6. Teenager (May)*

It was late. Midnight—a little past or a little before—and he hoisted her onto the table like she was a doll. His fingertips were rough with too many pulled splinters and slips of the hammer on tender nerves, and they pushed along her soft naked thigh. His palm was heavy against her skin— searching for maximum feeling. She clutched him to her, nails digging into the grooves of his shoulder blades, and sighed into his mouth. He felt so self-assured in kissing her. And she laughed with the simple and sudden joy of it.

Dayton's jaw was dotted with stubble, like sandpaper against her jaw and then her neck and then her collarbone. Laura could feel him smile (his teeth against her neck) and she threaded her hands through his light-colored hair (even more bleached from the sun), his firm hand enjoying a breast. His breath was hot and her skin felt hot. And this time there wasn’t any weed or moonshine or raw strings in the distance—no ceremonies. Dayton wouldn’t whisper poetry in her ear. This wouldn’t be some monumental surrender, a testament to how she weakens him.

He kissed her again and he made a noise at the back of his throat. Somehow familiar. It sounded only barely contained, almost gleefully half-cocked. She fell back onto her elbows--sliding further down the table until her boot heels scraped the varnished wood. Dayton scrambled onto the table with a laugh, his body hovering over hers until she wrapped her fingers around his collar and tugged him down.

His body was so close and she could only see his gray eyes before he swooped down and kissed her with a force that tilted her chin into the air, the back of her head grinding into the wooden surface. He tasted like cheap cigars and he smelled like hard water; his hands were rough and so was his touch and gods, it turned her on.

Overhead, she heard the gentle rattle of lamp chains and around her she heard the nighttime rustle of canvas. An overwhelming sense of solitude—the crickets and the distant voices, a man's laughter from far away. An overwhelming sense of closeness, pinned to the table by his weight, his wonderfully calloused hands. Laura arched against him, breasts aching for the friction of another body—her hands suddenly insistent against the nape of his slightly sun-burnt neck.

Dayton's hiss turned to a sort of laughing sigh as his lips slipped to the side of her mouth. "I've wanted to do this for a long time," he panted, confessing without a shred of shame or reluctance or doubt. His fingers danced along her rib cage.

If it was a sin or a burden to want her then Dayton didn't seem to care. He didn't have to hide behind a title as constricting as a priest's collar. She could feel his erection pressing against her thigh.

And the freedom of it made Laura breathe out, "Me too."

She smiled. It was sincere. It felt good. Because only when she said it did she realize that those words were true. Laura nipped his lower lip with a grin, and heard his answering chuckle dissolve into a moan. Dayton's hands dug into her hair, pulling and grabbing--taking great fistfuls of tangled curls. And in the midst of this kissing fever pitch, it suddenly felt so humid and so heavy for a night in May.

Laura's leg bent, her skirt falling up her waist as her calf rubbed against his belt--the metal loopholes of her boots catching on the leather.

"Undo this," she whispered against his lips, sliding her leg again for unneeded emphasis, again and again. "Please."

Dayton smiled and leaned back on his haunches, sitting between her parted legs. His eyes trailed over her, his hand absently stroking the inside of her thigh. She smiled, luxuriating in the familiar feeling of coiling tension, before she stretched under his gaze and dropped an arm above her head. Her fingernails scraped across the varnish. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but he stopped. His shoulders moved up and down with his breathing, matching the anticipatory heaving of her chest. Dayton gave his cock a graceless squeeze before he fumbled with the clasp of his belt, the button of his trousers, the slide of his zipper.

And with his fly peeled open, Laura found it difficult to focus on anything but his hardness, straining against his underwear. Like some sort of reflex, Laura felt hungry, her teeth grazing her lower lip.

Dayton grinned his smug little grin, somehow endearing because of the happiness in it. He looked eager and she felt eager. His fingers twitched against her leg and slipped to her waist, fingers playing with the edges of her panties.

"Mmm." Her eyes were half-lidded and she sounded so frakking needy, but she really didn't care. He made an approving noise, low and primal, and his smile was gone as he tugged the damn things down to an ankle so quickly and so carelessly that it made her…

She just needed him to frak her. She needed him to do it now. She might have told him; she probably did.

"Laura." He breathed out on a shuddering breath, his tongue darting over his lips with one pass. Dayton shifted, she damn-near whimpered and...the table creaked.

_Oh, Gods._

Despite feeling addled and despite not really giving a damn, Laura apprehensively lifted onto her elbows. "Do you think this will hold?" she asked, her voice airy.

"Huh?"

"The table," she breathed.

Dayton straightened, letting the question process before an affronted expression came over his face. "You saying something about my handiwork, ma'am?"

His broad smile gave him away.

Laura lifted an eyebrow, and he suddenly looked a little unsure of himself. Dayton spared a look to both sides and bounced up and down on his knees, testing it. He looked fairly ridiculous with his cock bobbing inside his shorts. And when Laura laughed, he smirked.

"It's good."

"It's good?"

"Very good," he groaned, his hands burrowing beneath her top and cupping her breasts. Laura's eyes drifted shut and when she pressed into his touch, he sighed something that sounded like "yeah". She wanted to be naked; she wanted him that way. But there just wasn't enough time, it seemed. Like back in those days, sixteen and fumbling in the back of a parent's car—loaned only for the night. The tent felt like it was rapidly running out of air and she felt as if she'd suffocate if he didn't frak her hard and frak her now.

Bracing himself over her with one hand, Dayton reached between them and shoved his underwear down to mid-thigh. His breathing was hard and his smile was wide and he gathered both of her arms and lifted them over her head. His fingers curled against hers, holding onto the ledge. His hand slammed back down on the table, a slap beside her head.

"But you better hold on, baby," Dayton muttered against her lips, "because I'm gonna test its durability for you."

Laura grinned.

+++

Tory looked up into the too blue sky, shielding her eyes from the noontime sun.

"You want to _set her up_...with the man that made the _tables_?"

Maya scoffed--in that girlish, giddy way that young women scoff--and rolled her eyes. "Tory, I am not _setting her up_." She adjusted Isis at her hip and inspected an ugly little crabapple. "I just thought it would be nice to have him over. He does so much for us."

Tory folded her arms across her chest and with a petulant scowl, adjusted her shoulder inward so that someone could squeeze past her. Whoever it was, they smelled like a mix between dog and wet grass.

She hated going to the forum market. It was loud and smelly and claustrophobic. The rates were an absolute crime. But Maya loved the bustle and the bartering and the constant conversation and she often insisted Tory come with her when she went scavenging for dinner supplies. And for some godsforsaken reason, Tory always agreed to keep her company.

"He built the tables, Maya," she said, "That's all."

"We needed the tables."

"We could have managed without _tables_."

Maya bounced Isis and tapped her little nose, smiling brilliantly at the baby. "Tory's just jealous," she cooed, before turning to the vendor and offering up a column of pencils that were banded together with a piece of string.

It was Tory's turn to scoff. "Why do you think I'm _jealous_?"

Maya gave her a knowing look as she handed over the small bundle and plucked five apples, tossing them into her sack. For a brief moment, Tory felt guilty that she wasn't carrying anything. But she figured that if Maya wanted help, she would ask. Besides, she was being absolutely ridiculous about this whole situation with Dr. Willer and dinner and Laura.

"You automatically _assumed_ I was setting him up with Laura and you're being very defensive about the entire thing," Maya said, moving on to the next stand. "Oh _come on_ , Tory. I'm not blind."

Frak her. Tory averted her eyes at the accusation. They managed to maneuver through the sea of people, washing up at a stand selling local herbs. The air around the kiosk smelled strong and earthy, almost savory. Almost like Tauron. She’d always liked Tauron.

"He's going to get the wrong impression, Maya," Tory muttered into her ear. "He's constantly...checking her out on the sly."

" _You're_ constantly checking her out on the sly,” Maya laughed, depositing Isis into Tory's arms. "Here. Hold her for a minute."

The baby gurgled and kicked happily. Tory couldn't help but grimace. Kids were never her...thing.

"It's not a good idea," Tory grumbled, adjusting her arms clumsily as Isis squirmed and squirmed. She never fidgeted like this with Maya or Laura. Just her frakking luck.

"Well, I disagree," Maya responded brightly, trading a thin ream of paper for seasonings, "I like him. Laura likes him; they talk all the time during recess. And you're just going to have to deal with it for one night." Tory struggled with Isis. "Oh Gods, you look so awkward.”

Tory scowled, holding Isis away from her body as if the baby were contagious. "You take Isis. I'll take the bag. Deal?"

"Deal," Maya said. "It'll be fun, Tory. You'll see."

Tory rolled her eyes, stalking after Maya when she turned to walk away.

“Maya,” Tory said, trying to impress on her the stupidity of the idea. “He makes the frakking _tables_.”

+++

Laura glanced upward from her desk to where Maya stood at the center of the school tent, all smiles and giddy anticipation. "Tonight?" Laura asked, tapping her pen against her lips.

"Yes. What do you think?" Maya bounced on her heels slightly and Tory, who hovered nearby, glowered at the sight.

Tory cut in. "We already have four of us to feed."

"Isis doesn't count," Maya responded. "And besides, it'll be nice to have someone else with us for a change."

She looked at Laura—her expression expectant and hopeful, almost like a little girl hankering for an ice cream cone. Maya loved to mingle and entertain and socialize; it was equivalent to a strawberry sundae for her. And Laura often found some difficulty in denying Maya that small comfort—let alone anything—when Maya yearned for her approval. All her girlish grins and her large, brown eyes certainly didn’t make it any easier. Tory sometimes accused her of coddling Maya, but Laura had the sneaking suspicion that Tory's "concern" stemmed from wanting to remain her “favorite” more than any unfair treatment on Laura's part.

She sighed. It was a wonder they weren't pulling at each other's pigtails.

"Indulge your crush on your own time," Tory suggested with contempt. "Don't make us suffer through it."

Maya turned a guilty shade of pink and scowled at Tory, who was busying herself with arranging papers. "Like you have any room to talk, _Tory_."

Laura rested her chin on the heel of her hand. "Are you two finished?"

They both looked at her, chastised expressions on their faces.

"Thank you," Laura snapped, scratching at her temple. "Honestly, this is ridiculous. You're squabbling over...a dinner? Who is it that you wanted to invite, anyway?"

"Dr. Willer."

"The _table guy_ ," Tory jeered.

"I know who he is, Tory."

Shifting in her seat, she spared a look at _the_ table, second from the desk. Jimmy and Ashley sat there in the morning, Vera and Anthony in the afternoon—and it was there that she and 'the table guy' had sex the night before.

Laura cleared her throat. Gods, she could still feel the rhythmic slide of her head against the solid tabletop, his hot breath as he moaned into her mouth...and many, many other things. She felt herself smile, a knuckle drifting across her lips.

After they’d frakked, the two of them didn't say much in epilogue. She’d plucked her dangling panties from her boot and he’d fastened his trousers. He walked with her to her tent — a pleasant smile on his face, a spring in his step. There was a hushed goodnight and he’d grinned, stuffing his hands into his pockets before he turned and set off into the night.

She hadn't seen him at all today.

"Laura?"

"Um." Laura straightened in her chair. "Why...why do you want to invite Dr. Willer?"

Maya sighed. "I just thought we should thank him. It's _polite_." She spared a pointed look at Tory, who ignored her.

Laura didn't know what to say. She wasn't one to feel strange about one-night stands. Maybe a part of her didn't want the fling with Dayton to be a one-off thing, and that gave her reason to pause. But Maya was right. Even though he had been "privately" reimbursed, they should extend a gesture of thanks. He did help. He helped a lot—certainly more than he had to.

"Yes. You're right," Laura said. "We should."

Maya lit up, a wide grin bursting across her face.

And behind her returning smile, Laura suddenly felt an uncharacteristic flutter of nerves.

+++

"What do I do?"

Dayton laughed, looking up at the lanky kid standing near him. He was a student. Sixteen and hopelessly in love. The boy blocked out the sun, looking like a black silhouette against the light.

After he’d physically broken up a schoolyard scuffle a few weeks ago, Dayton had been rewarded with a modicum of respect from the teenage boys. They went to him in order to settle arguments; and under the misguided idea that he was their guru, the boys shuffled up to his tent and asked for his advice every now and then.

It didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. Those kids were never in short supply of cigarettes or interesting (if misinformed) stories. He enjoyed spending time with them. But those memories of a fatherless son on Picon and the young (too young) woman that was his mother often put a damper on those moments with the boys. He’d loved her and he’d left her—he left his son, whose name he didn’t even know.

"So, what do I do?" the boy repeated impatiently. This kid was named Leonard-- tried to make everybody call him Leo. But he was a brain and he was scrawny and he looked so frakking sad when he stuffed a smoke in his mouth and tried to feign apathy. Desperately seeking "cool". The other boys often used him as a source of amusement.

It just so happened that Leo, the hopeless one, came to Dayton the most out of all of them.

"What makes you think I have any idea?" Dayton asked, sitting on an uprooted stump in front of his tent and whittling away at a small wooden project he was working on. He'd become quite the craftsman over the past few weeks. Aside from tables, he'd worked on chairs. They turned out pretty damn good, if he said so himself.

A cool May breeze rustled his hair and he watched as his knife smoothed across the sanded wood. He liked watching the shavings—their slow curl. Reminded him of the sea, of Picon, of Laura Roslin’s hair.

Thinking of her for a moment, he smiled.

"You're a smart kid, Leo," Dayton said. "You know, start talking to her. Dazzle her with all that knowledge you've got floating inside that head of yours." He glanced at him, waving the blade in his direction. "Girls like it when you've got a big brain." To be honest, wooing young girls was probably the best way to put that brain to use these days.

"No," Leo grumbled under his breath, "Girls like it when you've got a big dick."

Dayton had a good laugh. "Well, that certainly helps."

Leo scowled. "I can't believe you've got your doctorate."

"Neither can I sometimes. Believe me."

"I'm being serious," Leo snapped, frowning at Dayton's easy smile and casual attitude toward the insurmountable trials of teenage love.

Dayton blew on the carving in his hand, revealing an idol of Pallas Athene. He was partial to Mars and Hermes himself. But Athena was a god in high demand these days. Someone might trade something nice for it.

"Think you can carve up Aphrodite?" Leo mumbled. "She'd probably help me more than you can."

Dayton chuckled, inspecting his work with satisfied smile. "Pray hard enough and maybe she'll come floating down from the clouds. Take care of that pesky virginity problem for you."

Leo laughed, glancing at a couple that passed. "Man, you're a real asshole."

He stood, dusting off his pants and setting the idol aside. Dayton clapped the kid on the back. "You've got a lot to offer, Leo. Just get some balls, talk to her and you'll be fine. Trust me."

The boy nodded and took in a deep breath. It caught in his throat, as he stared over Dayton's shoulder.

"Oh, shit," he huffed, looking to his feet.

Dayton turned to see Maya walking toward his tent. She waved, smiling that big smile of hers. He liked her—the unflappable optimist who seemed to dance rather than walk. Whenever he saw her, Dayton half-expected to see her wearing a crown of daisies around her head. He held up his hand in greeting before he noticed Leonard fidgeting at his side.

"Shit. What do I say?" the boy hissed.

Dayton's eyebrows rose. "You were talking about _Maya_?"

Leo glared at him as she drew nearer. "If you say a frakkin’ thing—"

"Dr. Willer!" Maya called, as Leonard shrank behind him. "I wanted to ask you something."

+++

The ground crunched with each of his steps, and he felt compelled to watch each one — the dusty tips of his boots pushing stones and scuffing the dirt. Dayton dug his hands into his pockets. It was twilight and it was getting a little cooler. Short puffs of wind caressed his hair and soothed exposed patches of his skin that were a little too pink to be considered attractive. It felt good.

He liked this time of day. It seemed quiet, the hour hovering on the pale edge between afternoon and early evening. Just like everything seemed to hover between spring and summer. Waiting.

New Caprica waited patiently.

He waited anxiously, stomach clenching as he approached their tent. Suddenly, he wished he hadn't accepted the invitation to dinner. Because if Maya was there then Tory was there and that meant that Laura was there too, and hell if he knew where they stood.

He’d frakked Laura Roslin and that wasn't something to be trifled with, especially when he wanted (really wanted) another chance to do it again.

Dayton smiled. He felt sixteen again. He felt like poor Leo, who he'd practically shoved into walking Maya back to the school tent.

Poor kid. He didn't stand a chance. And Dayton could feel it: he didn’t stand much of chance either.

Standing in front of the tent flap, he heard their voices inside. And hers (that sort of smoky alto) seemed to float, wafting to his ears as if unconsciously selected. With a slight hesitation, Dayton braced himself and tugged on the little bell that they'd fastened to the seam of the entrance.

And he waited, anxiously.

Pleasant Maya, with all her ready enthusiasm, swung open the flap and admitted him inside. "Dinner's almost ready,” she announced. “Come inside.”

Instantly, he caught Laura's eyes. She was sucking on a finger, presumably tasting whatever Tory was stewing. He smirked. She instantly dropped her hand.

And even though she turned her head away, even though she feigned disinterest, Dayton saw her smile.

He couldn't help the grin that spread across his face.

+++

"Isn't that the name of a city?"

Laura watched as Dayton brought his spoon to his lips, his eyes shifting to Tory. "It probably is...or was. Though the doctors pumped my mother so full of drugs that I'm sure she could've come up with plenty of worse things to name me. Trust me." He laughed and took a sip.

Maya giggled, taking a little taste of her broth. Laura honestly didn’t know how the two of them could abide by the bland, watery taste. She and Tory had the good sense to eat it quickly, when the soup was still so piping hot that it scalded the tongue and left it numb.

Now Tory attempted to undermine Dayton at every corner of the conversation. She had been brooding all evening. Tory went out for blood whenever she was in a foul mood. And admittedly, Laura was rather impressed by how he seemed to deflect every underhanded barb that Tory flung his way.

Laura added very little to the discussion. Rather, she observed—leaning back with her arms crossed over her breasts.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t say a thing; their eyes kept meeting every so often (in the spaces between) before either Maya or Tory piped up with something new. Laura persistently felt the need to duck her head, hiding the ridiculous smiles that tugged on her lips whenever they shared a look. A meaningful tilt of the head. Secret, teenage acknowledgments.

He always smiled. He didn't have a reason to hide them. He didn't have a reason to hide anything; so, he didn't. And Laura knew, if not for her cues pleading for discretion (gods, she used them too much), he probably would have kissed her by now. Maybe.

Gods knew, a base part of her wanted him to.

After Maya and Dayton finished their broth, Laura rose from her seat and collected the dishes, scooping them into a green bucket. Maya exchanged pleasantries with Dayton, and he distractedly got to his feet.

Laura neared the tent flap, pausing before she turned to them. She smiled. "Dr. Willer. Perhaps you'd like to add something more to your résumé?" She shrugged a shoulder, imitating self-deprecation. "I always seem to have trouble with the water pump."

Tory was skeptical. "You do?"

"Yes. I do."

"I'd love to, Ms. Roslin," Dayton cut in, sparing no time in opening the tent flap. "After you? Thank you for dinner, Maya. Tory. Don't be surprised if I drop in unexpectedly once in a while to take advantage of your kindness again."

Maya giggled again. Tory, however, was neither amused nor charmed.

+++

Dayton took a calming breath as he stepped outside the tent, following Laura. It was darker now—the first stars peeking out of the streaked sky. All around him he could hear, and smell, dinner. Smoke curled out of little tin chimneys. Charred logs were set aside. And oddly, aside from the pair of them, there were few that still lingered outdoors.

"You coming?" Laura tossed over her shoulder, setting off toward the direction of the water pump.

"Yeah." After a few hurried steps, he ended up at her side — taking up her rather leisurely pace. "You want me to…?" He gestured toward the bucket in her arms.

"I've got it," she replied, the lilt in her voice suggesting humor. There was this pretty little smile on her face, as if she were cradling a secret instead of a bucket of dirty dishes. The evening zephyrs rustled her hair, blowing some of it across her face and then back. And he wanted to touch her, but he didn’t.

They took a few more steps in silence before Dayton cleared his throat, his shoulders stiffening.

"Listen, I, don't really know how...how we're supposed to do this in our...well, our present situation." He stumbled over his words, glancing over at her. "But I'd really like...well, I'd really like to see you again."

There was an excruciating moment of silence during which Dayton's breath seemed to halt and he desperately tried to concentrate on the shamble of their steps in the dirt. He had always hated rejection. For all his bravado and airs of confidence, he never took it very well. Not since he was awkward, sixteen, and pretty Ava Friell needed to wash her hair on both Friday and Saturday night.

Laura hummed, a rich purr that carried on the seven o'clock wind. "I'd like that too," she said, looking over at him with that private smirk of hers and a sort of glint in her eyes

His face stretched into such an instant grin that he was afraid of looking like a complete fool; so, he ducked his head and kept it to himself. But he wasn’t a politician and he wasn’t a very good liar, and he failed miserably.

They neared the spigot and Laura dropped the bucket with a clatter at its base. When he moved to the handle, she placed her hand on his arm.

She smiled, “I don’t need help with the pump.”

Dayton chuckled, rubbing his neck. “I should have figured.”

He watched her as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and her skirt fluttered around her legs. She placed both hands on the iron handle of the pump.

"Laura,” he said suddenly, without warning. “I'm not good at keeping secrets."

He wasn’t any good at secret affairs or intermittent quickies at two o’clock in the morning. Secret destinations, secret expressions.

She paused, considering. She looked to the sky and then back down at the ground. And then she breathed, steadying herself on the handle.

"I don't want you to," Laura declared softly, talking into her shoulder. Talking as if she were reaching some monumental decision.

She met his eyes and shook her head. "I don’t want us to."

Dayton nodded.

They didn’t.


	7. I'm Finding it Harder to Be a Gentleman (December)*

Though it was little more than a tin-roofed shanty, Joe’s was the place to be on a Friday night. Especially now that it was winter and people needed to exchange union disputes for shot glasses.

Everyone needed to let the vodka-tongue do the talking every now and then. 

The dive was packed with drunken patrons, a good third of whom were his men. Someone thrummed away with a bass guitar—some languorous deep chord that tried to imitate the sweltering heat of human bodies in motion. Clouds of moving smoke were trapped against the ceiling, curling up from moldy cigarettes. The whole place looked trapped in a hothouse haze and it smelled of tobacco, vomit, marijuana and sweat. The odor should have been nauseating; instead, it smelled human. And it comforted him. 

No one paid any attention as the Admiral lumbered toward the bar and slipped onto a metal stool. With his index and middle finger (as if entering a game of high-stakes blackjack), he tapped on the wooden surface of the counter. With the summer months gone, there was only one drink on the menu: rotgut. And it was always a game of chance whether or not you’d get a drink that’d instantly churn your stomach with nausea. If you were lucky, you got something close to fire. 

A glass was set before him; he lifted it, considering the clear liquid. The glass was chipped, fingerprints smudged all over its body. Adama nodded once to the bartender in thanks and then downed the stuff with a hiss and a grimace. 

_Ah. Fire._

He glanced at the mass of dancers, swaying to the music. Most of them had their eyes half closed, relishing in the smoke and the glide of someone else across from them and behind them and beside them. He watched as a man’s hands slipped down his partner’s spine, like silk, to the round curve of her ass. 

A middle-aged woman sat alone at a table, her face caked with makeup in an attempt to mask her years. She followed after a bearded man, slinking behind a ratty old curtain. Someone called foul at a game of strip triad. 

A hotbed of sin. Had this place changed so much since that night in July? Or had he never noticed? Did it really matter?  

Adama ordered another drink.  

“Evening, Admiral,” a voice said, sitting at his side. 

Bill turned to look at the man. It was Laura’s ...Willer was his last name. He couldn’t quite remember his first; years in the military conditioned his ear to surnames. Had he been sitting there this whole time? Again—did it matter? The man lifted his drink in welcome, smiled and took a hearty gulp. He shook his head involuntarily. 

“Strong stuff,” Willer muttered, almost to himself. 

“Mr. Willer,” Bill grumbled in greeting. 

“Doctor,” he corrected, and then laughed bitterly. “But what does it matter anymore, anyway? Don’t need a degree to be a frakking carpenter. Eh, but I like it…I like it.” 

Adama cleared his throat. Looked like Willer already had a head start. 

“It’s Dayton, by the way,” he said, tipping his drink in Adama’s direction. 

The bartender filled the Admiral’s glass. 

“What are you doing here?” Adama asked, staring straight ahead into the filthy mirror that lined the wall. 

“I’m not allowed to be here?” he chuckled, swinging his empty glass between his two fingers — a careless motion that made Adama want to snatch it away from him before it slipped and broke on the countertop. 

“Not what I meant.” 

He didn’t care as much about why Willer was there as why he wasn’t with someone else. And the insinuation clung to the smoky air between them. He watched Willer in the mirror, the drunken man hung his head and then set down his glass with a definitive clunk. 

“Yeah,” Willer said. “I know.” 

Adama lifted his glass to his lips and slung it back. His nostrils burned with the alcohol. He sniffed, shaking his head like a bull. Willer was right. It was strong stuff. 

The music began to pick up, and Adama glanced at the floor. Somebody added a drum beat to the bass, and somebody else filled up his drink. The place itself seemed to pulse, and it felt like the bar was trapped in the same entropic state that infected the bones of this ghetto-city. Action needed to feed action—constant exchanges of energy. 

“Hell of a place now, huh?” Willer said. “You can get anything here. Music, dance, a good fight, a good frak. Maybe free. Probably not. And then there’s the moonshine.” Adama watched as Willer held out his glass, admiring it with a drunken little laugh. “Just to be straight—that’s what I come here for. The booze.” 

Adama took a gulp that stung in his head. And as he watched that man in the mirror, he took in the scent of all the seedy iniquities in the bar and attached Willer to every single one. Because he needed and wanted to hate him. 

It was easier to hate someone than to love someone they touched. 

The Admiral lent a disparaging look at the good-time girls looming in the corner and snorted into his newly filled drink. “Never for a _good frak_?” 

Willer laughed — he sounded cocky and Adama didn’t need to look at his reflection in the mirror to know that he had a stupid little grin on his face. “No. I get that plenty at home, Admiral.” 

Bill watched as the man downed another drink. “My gods, she’s a frakking tiger sometimes. Never a dull moment with that one, if you know what I’m saying.” 

Willer boasted without a tinge of venom to his voice; he sounded…comfortable. Adama’s face contorted into a scowl. It seemed like Willer didn’t even consider him a…what, a threat? Is that what he was? A rival? Adama huffed into his glass with a bitter smile. It was all ridiculous. 

He needed another drink. 

He ordered with a frown and Willer with a grin. Like the twin masks of comedy and tragedy, sitting beside each other and getting wasted. 

“Yet, here you are,” Adama said, aggression lacing his words. “Sitting alone at the bar.” 

Willer’s reflection tensed and his smile wasted away after another sip. The Admiral watched the man turn toward him, staring at his profile. 

“As opposed to frakking Laura? That what you’re trying to get at?” 

Adama’s face was as impassive as he could manage, but his eyes looked dark with accusation. He took another gulp and set down his glass. 

“You two…having problems?” 

“Just because I’m over here at Joe’s doesn’t mean we’re having _problems_ ,” Willer snapped. “And it’s none of your godsdamn business.” 

But the truth of Adama’s suggestion blazed across Willer’s face like a bad rash. 

They were having problems. 

And though Adama wanted to take satisfaction in this news, he couldn’t. Just like he couldn’t fully hate Willer, just like he couldn’t fault him. 

But he wanted to. He wanted to very badly. 

The man turned away and a moment of silence passed between them. Adama felt his finger tapping the side of the smudged glass … tapping to the beat of the music, to the pumping of his own blood. He thought of Laura and his chest suddenly felt like caving in, like it was mottled with all kinds of yellow-purple bruising. 

“How is she?” he rasped, his voice low. 

“You mean you haven’t seen her yet?” 

“No.” 

“ _Wow_ ,” Willer breathed, his voice brimming with contempt, “Usually when you come down on shore leave, it’s like she disappears into thin air. I might not see her for…frakking… _days_ when the _Admiral_ is visiting.” 

Adama grunted noncommittally. It was true. Each time he came down, he saw this man less and Laura more. Probably her own version of damage control. She couldn’t have the two of them locking horns like billy goats every time they happened to cross paths. 

“Just arrived tonight,” he said. 

“Oh, well, I guess you can just ask her yourself tomorrow. While you two are… _bonding_.” 

Willer glowered, and seemed to bite the inside of his lower lip before he took another swig of booze. His eyes were glassy and his shoulders tense  he looked pent up with frustration. Adama knew the feeling—he could see it in the muddied reflection of the mirror. His own furrowed brow and knitted eyebrows, shoulders hunched. His fists were just _waiting_ for some kind of excuse to fly off the handle. Everything itched and gnawed at him. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the music. 

Maybe it was just the sensation of his own personal spring, slowly tightening…slowly coiling. 

Usually, he’d take out all of his frustrations on the punching bag, pounding away at the hide until sweat stung his eyes and he felt absolutely spent. He used to jerk off every now and then, just to feel some relief. But nowadays, it only caused him more frustration. On the nights he’d allowed himself to think about Laura, tugging on his cock, it was this bastard’s face that seemed to bleed through. Dayton Willer replaced him in his own fantasies. And maybe that was just enough to really hate him. Because gods damn, it hurt in the worst way. 

“Listen, I don’t really want to talk to you. And I know you don’t really want to talk to me,” Willer sighed, “I don’t care what you do.” He gestured toward the hookers lounging in the shadows. “I’m not gonna tattle on you.” 

Willer rubbed his forehead. “Laura and I end up talking about you too much already. I’m sure as hell not gonna be the one to bring you up in conversation myself. Trust me.” He clutched his drink in his hand, knuckles white. “Besides, it’s probably been a while…hasn’t it, Admiral?” 

Son of a bitch had no idea. 

“You don’t know shit.” 

Willer cackled, his face suddenly pale. He looked sick and he stifled a cough at the end of his laughter. “So it’s true, then? You cozy up with the Colonel during those long, lonely rotations?” 

“Wanna know something?” Adama snarled, bile stirring in the pit of his stomach. 

“Yeah. Sure,” Willer scoffed. 

“You can’t handle her, and you know it. That’s what the problem is.” 

Adama hit a nerve; he could tell. A mean smirk threatened to cross his face, looming like a thunderhead. 

“Yeah? And whatever happened on Founders' Day? That’s _handling_ her?” 

Before Adama could respond, something stirred on the dance floor. One shove, another returned. 

Adama and Willer watched from their drunken perch as two boys started brawling. They toppled over a table, spilled some drinks – the music never skipping a beat. A young woman attempted to intervene and instead got an elbow to the nose. Squinting, Bill recognized her as one of Baltar’s girlfriends. The snotty little brunette – the one with the fake tits – that usually lay sprawled on the couch in Colonial One. He’d seen her, a cigarette between her fingers and half-naked in trashy lingerie, every time he had a meeting with that motherfrakker. Tonight, she broke her ornamental silence with a shrill whine: “Stop it, you frakking idiots!” 

He cringed. No wonder she never spoke. 

The crowd parted as the fight escalated. The two boys tumbled around the bar until they stumbled through the flap and out into the snow. A small crowd of chanting spectators followed after them. 

Adama and Willer turned back to the bar, like two priests having watched a porno. Willer wanted to lash out just as badly as he did; he could see it. But they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. Not without serious consequence, and they both knew it. 

Adama let out an exhausted breath and it felt like hell crawling up his throat. He could see Willer staring at something across the dive. It was the table — the one where they’d arm wrestled that summer. Adama looked back at the bar top and at his dark hands. He clenched them tight and then let them go. How Willer knew about Founders' Day didn’t matter—it only mattered that he somehow knew. It was just another barb, aggravating the violence that vibrated in his blood. 

“Do you love her?” Adama asked then, needing to know…needing to figure out whether he could find a legitimate reason to beat the ever-loving shit out of him. 

The question went unanswered for a few moments, but Adama knew that Willer had heard him. The music continued, slow and so deep. 

Willer’s glass clinked against the counter. “Do you?” he shot back. But instead of waiting for an answer, he continued on a long and defeated sigh. “Of course you do. Of course you do.” The man played with his glass, tipping it back and forth along the wood counter. “You wanna know something?” 

Adama nodded, bracing himself for a hit. “Yeah.” 

But there was no hit. There was just a sad, tired sound. 

“She doesn’t love me. I can tell you that much,” Willer said. “I don’t think she ever will. And I already…” He stopped. “It scares the hell out of me. That’s the problem. That’s the problem. And here I am in this lonely hearts club and getting frakking smashed because I know…” 

The man swallowed thickly, and Adama watched as he put on a silly smile for show. “Well, Admiral, there’s just no room in songs for the _table guy_.” 

At his questioning look, Dayton waved his hand. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t listen to me. I’m drunk. I say stupid shit when I’m drunk.” 

Adama took another drink, and actually chuckled. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Me too.” 

Yeah, he said stupid stuff when he was drunk. 

Yeah, he loved Laura Roslin. And yeah, she didn’t love him back. 

_Yeah. Me too._

“Look at me,” Willer said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m pining like…like I’m a kid again.” 

_Yeah. Me too._

“She does have that effect.” 

The man lifted his drink halfheartedly. “I’ll drink to that, Admiral.” But as he lifted it to his lips, he took a whiff and grimaced, setting it down. He looked nauseous, but he smiled through his washed-out face. “Then again, maybe not. Maybe later.” 

The Admiral drained his last glass and lifted it to him. For the first time that night, the two men met each other’s eyes. They recognized one another in the way that drunken fools do, as a reflection beyond that in the dirty mirror. 

Lovesick. Blue-eyed. Weary. 

And all of it made him long for change. 

“Yeah,” he said, shoving his glass aside and inhaling a great lungful of smoke. Adama looked to roof. He watched a few snowflakes, a shaft of winter light, fall into a crack in the tin. “Maybe later.”


	8. Pyro (October)*

When he was submerged, everything was a glorious blur. The water was so thick with sediment that when Dayton broke through the surface of the lake, everything around him seemed so much brighter and louder and clearer than it had before.  
  
It was a brand new day, ripe with possibility.  
  
Dayton blinked back the water and shook out his hair. He enjoyed the warm sunlight that bathed his face and the tracks of water that trickled down from his hair and over his face. Nothing could ruin it. Not even the young kid that paddled past him—his small feet thumping and thrashing against the lake. Even when Dayton sputtered out a mouthful, he couldn’t frown. He was happy as hell.  
  
A shift in the weather can do that.  
  
It had been unseasonably warm this last week and a half. According to Baltar’s experts, the Indian Summer was a complete fluke. A beautiful and wonderful freak of nature. Once word got out that this was probably their last lick of warm weather, great handfuls of people flocked to the mountain lake to enjoy it for as long as it might last. Dayton and Laura included.  
  
She lounged on the shore, keeping an ever-vigilant eye on her surroundings—the crowds, the clouds, the children that managed to creep away from their temperature-fawning parents. And Dayton couldn’t help but think that her hawk-eyed way of viewing the world might have been terribly intimidating if she weren’t so damned good-looking.  
  
As it happens, he waded through rowdy teenage boys and flirty heart-breakers and fathers teaching their young sons how to swim—and his eyes wouldn’t leave her.  
  
Laura stretched out on his woven blanket with her red skirts bunched around her waist, looking at one thing and then another with a serene, private smile. When she spotted him, now trudging through the shallows, she rested her head against her shoulder and grinned. Dayton felt warm again, from the inside out, and he really loved it.  
  
“You should come in,” he suggested, shuffling through the pale sand, “Water’s perfect.”  
  
Dayton dropped down on his knees beside her; and grace be to the Gods, his angle afforded him a gorgeous view down her camisole. His heart nearly leapt out of his chest when she turned and hummed and swept her warm hands down his chest, whisking up the droplets clinging to his skin. Her wet hands went to the back of her neck (a sigh), her arms (a hum) and the peeking swells of her breasts. He was more than a little warm now.  
  
“I bet,” she said, with a kittenish half-grin.  
  
Dayton gathered his towel against his lap. The sexy little smiles always got to him and Laura just laughed—laughed like a girl—because she knew it.  
  
He leaned in close and his nose grazed her hair. She smelled of lavender sachet powder and homemade herbal soap. Even under a film of sweat and dirt, she smelled that way. His fingers played with the hem scrunched around her thigh, and his battered fingertips fluttered against her skin. “Want to go back?”  
  
Laura smiled, chastising him. “It’s a thirty minute walk.”  
  
Always the practical one.  
  
“We can duck behind a bush on the way. I’m not picky,” he laughed, flicking a curl of her hair.  
  
Her small chuckle tapered off into a low hum, and she looked at him with a fond sort of clarity in her eyes. And he grinned. It was almost impossible to hide how much he was enjoying himself, just being there with her and lying under the sun. Laura’s fingers were cool and soothing against the sunburn that glazed his shoulders.  
  
“We can’t leave, anyway,” she reminded him, mercifully vague.  
  
Dayton swallowed hard. And Gods, it felt like cotton lodged in his throat. How could he forget? The Admiral was meeting them. The only lake-party in weeks and the Admiral was joining them.  
  
He gazed across at the water, watching Joe’s men set up the makeshift bar. Their wives strung up the lights and browned-up striplings rolled the tables upright and into position along the grassy shoreline. Tables that Dayton had built for Joe a few weeks ago. As payment for his services, Joe had guaranteed Dayton a sought-after seat by the water and a round of free drinks. And now his hard work was going to be wasted on Adama.  
  
What luck.  
  
Dayton trained his eyes on a familiar figure yucking it up with the bar owner—a large, red-faced butcher who lived on Dayton’s block. He was supplying a family of wild boar for the evening, and had made sure to regale Dayton with tales of the fortuitous hunt at least three times in as many days.  
  
The butcher had taken a weird shine to Dayton once he’d found out about his relationship with Laura. Often, he would sidle up to Dayton at the bar and buy him drink after drink—sharing overly detailed accounts of women he’d supposedly frakked. (So-and-so had puffy nipples. So-and-so liked anal sex.) All poorly veiled attempts at plying Dayton for information—which, of course, he never supplied. He got stupid when he was drunk, but he never got that stupid.  
  
It all seemed so annoying at the time, but after an hour or two of the butcher’s unsuccessful enthusiasm, Dayton felt pretty puffed up when he stumbled away from the roadhouse. He liked envy. He couldn’t help it. Dayton liked meandering down the busy thoroughfare in the early morning, with his arm wrapped around her waist and her body snug against his side. He liked having jealous eyes on him when he whispered something dirty in her ear, and when she laughed in response. And he had always liked knowing that other people wanted to be him. He was attractive enough, smart enough, charming enough for a little envy. It never bothered him that the butcher wanted Laura.  
  
Jealousy only bothered him when Adama was around—it only bothered him because the jealousy was finally his.  
  
His last conversation with Adama had been at the edge of a shadowy timberline. A tense discussion about falling stars and about men and gods. About Laura’s happiness. And since then, he’d thought about it. About who Adama was. About who he was to Laura. And he was more than some drunken lay on Founder’s Day. They were something—something different, something simmering below the surface. They were something that Dayton could not stand.  
  
He looked out at the rippling water, and he wanted to dive down to the lakebed again—cloud all of this up and come back up for a brighter day. The daydream of a humid afternoon, of happiness sprawled out and waiting for him in the heat. But winter was coming, fall was already here, and he could feel it waiting in the wings for a dramatic cue.  
  
Dayton could feel Laura watching him. Her rounded nails skated along his forearm and raised goose-bumps.  
  
“Guess I’ll just have to make the most of it,” he said. Because, it was all he could do in order to please her. And the Gods knew, he was a silly fool for the way he always wanted to.  
  
Laura grinned. And despite himself, Dayton grinned back.  
  
“Good,” she said, twirling his nerves and spinning his head as she kissed him sweet and slow. “I think you should.”

+++

Maybe the drinks helped, but it turned out there was a halfway decent conversationalist beneath Adama’s churlish exterior. While they picked at their barbeque and tossed back the swill, the two of them bantered about subjects that had no real meaning or significance whatsoever. Nothing too personal. Nothing too contentious. Things that were safe when mixed with alcohol. And Laura, for her part, seemed delighted in her own quiet way.  
  
Her obvious contentment made Dayton happy, even though, he could look between the two of them and _feel_ the busy molecules of their shared air. Passing back and forth and pulling them closer and closer together.  
  
Every now and then, Laura slipped Adama these girlish smiles. The kind that Dayton loved. The kind that glittered as they peeked over the rim of her glass. And more than once, Dayton spotted a small twitch of victory in the corner of Adama’s mouth.  
  
If you looked hard enough and long enough, which Dayton was forced to do, Admiral Adama was no good at hiding his affection for her. It was just barely restrained. His face was so severe that every skipped heartbeat and every flicker of lust changed his entire expression.  
  
It was an obvious tell.  
  
And Dayton’s reaction to it was almost instinctive. He reached over and did something even more obvious. Something boisterous. Demonstrative. Things like kissing Laura’s neck or laying a hand on her thigh. Things that he hoped might break through all the charged subtlety. And they did, but Dayton felt no real satisfaction. He just felt like a stupid threatened prick; so, he looked out at the water and watched the milky, twisting reflections of the lights. The orange flare of the fire pit. He ignored the sound of their intertwined voices, and listened intently to the ceaseless chatter of the waterbugs. The ludicrous drinking challenges at the bar. Anything but the charged quiet that existed between Adama and Laura.  
  
(He found himself poking at the table. Its legs were uneven and it shifted with the slightest pressure. He’d rushed it with this one.)  
  
When Adama pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket, Laura placed a hand on his—effectively stilling him. Dayton’s stomach dropped, and he ran his tongue along his teeth.  
  
“I’ve got something better,” she murmured, pulling a burnished cigarette case from the folds of her skirt. It glinted in the light as she rattled it back and forth.  
  
Dayton never felt more relieved in his life.  
  
Laura’s smirk was too mischievous to be entirely sober, and her hawk-eyes had lost some of their edge. She was such a lightweight and Adama chuckled at her. All the etchings and crags of his face harmonized in affection for her. And Dayton hoped to Hermes and Ares and any golden face that might hear him, that Laura was too drunk and wonderful to see it.  
  
“Best idea I’ve heard all night,” Adama said, pushing out from the table.  
  
Dayton downed the rest of his glass and rose from his seat. He felt a little wobbly in the head, but he shook it off.  
  
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

+++

The three of them followed the shoreline, shoulder to shoulder as they blazed up in the dark.

Dayton’s smiles drifted in and out. As they smoked in silence, every emotion got thinner and floppier and easier to manage. Everything felt so much simpler, and it was easy to pretend that they were all connected in simpler ways.

But then Adama leaned in toward Laura, so close that Dayton _knew_ he could smell the lavender and the soap and the heat of her skin. And all that easiness in his blood was flushed away by the vicious reality that nothing was ever simple. Least of all with Laura. Least of all with Adama. He took a hasty final drag, but it didn’t help.

“Show me your cabin,” Adama rasped. Laura hummed in response, and blew out a flimsy ribbon of smoke.

Dayton laughed anxiously. “You have a cabin up here and you didn’t tell me?”

“Someday,” Laura clarified, giving him a drowsy smile. “I will someday.”

“Someday … I’ll help you build it,” Adama drawled beside her.

Dayton reached for Laura as her steps drifted toward the Admiral. She went easy (easier than he expected) and melted into his side. She rested her head on his shoulder, and Dayton glanced over her head at Adama. The Admiral puffed out a blue ring of smoke.

“Someday might be next week, Admiral,” Dayton slurred. He flicked his burned-out spliff to the side. “And you’ll be up there.” His hand lifted from Laura’s shoulder and pointed up toward the stars. He deposited a kiss on the crown of Laura’s head.

He was beginning to feel a little good, a little smug, when Laura stopped in her tracks. He tripped gracelessly into a large glade, butrighted himself before the heaviness of his limbs could bring him down.

“Here,” she stated.

Laura meandered toward the middle of the clearing. It was surrounded by pussy willows and phlox and long tall reeds that fenced off the lake. Adama moved to her side, and his arm brushed against hers.

“Here,” he repeated.

He gave her an approving nod of his head and tossed aside the stub of his blunt. “This is a good spot, Laura.” Adama placed his hands on his hips, as if surveying the land and all its abundant possibilities.

“I know,” Laura purred, nudging him with her shoulder.

Before Dayton could attempt a ham-handed intervention, Laura turned on her heel and approached him. She slid the woven blanket from the crook of his arm and unfurled it out on the ground. When she dropped to her knees on top of it, she tapped her fingers against the wide surface. One at either side of her.

“This is my sitting room,” she informed them. And then with a winsome smile, “Sit.”

Both of them chuckled and both of them indulged her. They lowered themselves at either side and stretched out their legs. Adama’s knee rested against her right leg; Dayton’s knee rested against her left, and she made a low satisfied sound. A rich hum that plucked at Dayton’s nerve endings like they were musical strings. She could play his whole body if she wanted to, with a few careless touches and a few meaningless words.

It drove him crazy.

Sometimes a good crazy and sometimes a bad crazy. Right now, he was hovering somewhere in the middle.

Every optimist was once a dreamer; now, with too many hurts on his heart to look at the world with a dreamer’s starry-eyes. An optimist learned, the hard way, to see things as they were and search out the good in them. An optimist wasn’t stupid.

Dayton wasn’t a dreamer anymore. And he could see that right now, he was peripheral to her. The third wheel.

It pissed him off.

Unlike Adama, Dayton wasn’t a subtle man. Unlike Adama, he wasn’t particularly eloquent or deft. Actions, though, actions had always worked for him. Actions weren’t so damn cloudy. And after years of studying the human mind, and all its intricacies, actions were the purest thing he knew.

Dayton ran his hand along Laura’s thigh, down to her knee and then back towards her hip. Even under the fabric, she was warm and soft. His second pass was slower — insistent and savoring. Laura gazed at him. Her eyes were hazy and pretty and when she traced the line of his jaw with a fingernail, it made his heart beat faster.

Adama stiffened beside her. He looked like a pit-bull, one wrong move away from breaking down his cage door. And somehow, Laura sensed it. Like a bomb technician gracefully disarming them whenever their wires crossed. Or ran too hot. She defused them with a simple smile, with the simple favor of her attention. Laura ran her hand over Adama’s forearm, pressed her shoulder against his, and calmed him.

“You’ll visit me?” she asked Adama, all light and airy, steering his thoughts. “When it’s done?”

Adama looked down at her, and his face softened. “You want me to visit you?”

Laura gave him a coy smile and a noncommittal shrug. It was all an act. A big tease. Dayton felt sick.

Adama’s eyes were on her for a long time, and Dayton could _feel_ his yearning. The ever-present sadness of his own self-restraint. Dayton knew better than to pity him. He knew that Laura was a special kind of woman. A woman who could carve her name into the marrow of your bones. He knew, like all men knew, that a man could only take so much before his skeleton was weak with her autographs. Overrun with her.

Laura had to know, Dayton thought. She had to know that while she watched Adama, she kept cutting deeper and deeper and deeper. Daring him to move with her drunk-stoned-come-hither eyes.

And that’s why Dayton wasn’t surprised when Adama crushed his lips to hers. Or when her hands grasped his collar, reeling from the force of it. He wasn’t surprised to hear her small moan or his low grunt. The sight of the Admiral’s tongue unfurling into her mouth.

Dayton clutched at Laura’s thigh as if trying to keep her tethered to him, like a balloon string that was slipping through his fingers. Up, up, and away.

“I want to visit you,” Adama rumbled against her lips, one of his large hands cupping the side of her face.

Laura sighed—luscious and needy. She ran the pad of her thumb over Adama’s chin and pulled back. “I want you to,” she murmured, her fingers tracing senseless patterns over Adama’s weathered neck.

Dayton knew he should have been mad. He should have been furious. He should want nothing to do with her.

His hand tightened on her thigh and he fisted the red fabric in his hand. He pushed inward to where she was warmer and then downward, where she was hottest. Laura gasped, and the gentle (maddening) smacking of their lips stopped. She pulled away from Adama’s mouth.

Dayton could feel her. The heat. The dampness of the scrap of fabric nestled between her thighs. He rubbed his fingers against her, rough and hard, until she choked out his name.

Adama was about to kill him. And Dayton must have looked the same. He certainly felt the same.

_If she’s gonna be wet for you; then, by the gods, she’ll be wet for me too._

And then there was silence. And then stillness. And then a sigh.

Laura, at least, had the decency to look guilty. She looked down at her lap and then massaged the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. Her tongue darted out and wet her lips. She closed her eyes and leaned backward, pointing her face toward the stars. “It’s wrong to want you both,” she mumbled, her head lolling to its side, “But I do. I … sometimes I …”

His eyes met Adama’s. They flashed in the dark. And there was an unspoken current of violent fear that passed between them—the simple truth that Adama was not as old as Dayton liked to pretend he was and that Dayton was certainly not as young as he liked to appear. Because being young meant you could get away with heartbreak and jealousy and come out clean, with nothing more than a scabbed knee or a minor bruise. There’s time to heal. You have all the time in the world. But as the years go on, it’s harder and harder to be that careless. It’s harder and harder to take these things lightly. It’s harder to sacrifice.

It’s harder to let go.

And they weren’t gonna let go. Not of Laura.

Especially not of Laura.

Her nails scraped the back of Dayton’s hand and she moved her hips (once, twice) against his hard, curved fingers. “I can’t help but think about it,” she breathed to the sky, biting her lower lip. “I can’t.”

Dayton looked across at Adama, and their eyes met again. An unspoken challenge. A pull. A similar wound. But Dayton couldn’t hate Adama any less. In fact, something about it made Dayton want to hurt him more. So, he pressed his lips against Laura’s. Because she was beautiful, but mostly because it was revenge.

She wound a hand through his hair, and opened her mouth against his. Her kiss was electrifying, slow and thick like honey. He loved it. He loved the press of her breasts against his chest and he loved falling next to her on the blanket. He loved when one of her sleek legs curled tight around his thigh. Everything about her seemed so free and pliant, so liquid and careless. He could taste it on her—the drugs and the booze and the hot, honest takeover of her id. Every stroke of her tongue—every warm moan—sent shivering sparks of heat straight to the base of his spine.

When Laura laid back between them, Dayton and Adama shared the same sight. She untied the red knot of her dress, arching her breasts in the air. She tossed the shrug aside, her arms falling above her head and against the messy fan of her hair.

“I just want to be happy,” Laura said suddenly, her voice soft and broken. Almost unheard amidst the crickets and the rustling leaves.

Both men looked over at her, and spoke at the same time:

“I wanna make you happy.”

“I could make you happy.”

In the jumble of hushed words, Dayton wasn’t sure who had said what. It didn’t seem to matter, because it didn’t take long until Adama took action. Until he moved and decided everything for all of them. Adama shot up and stripped off his uniform jacket. Sure. Bold. And before Dayton could object, the man pinned Laura beneath him. He enveloped her with his thick arms and legs. He whispered things against her lips that Dayton couldn’t understand. She swallowed up each syllable.

All of his contradictory emotions swum together without any trouble or resistance. Lust. Jealousy. Anger. The horrible and wonderful sensation of being pulled to her. It wasn’t just the weed. Or the booze. It ran deep and carved deep and he could feel it igniting all the synapses in his brain—lighting them up and burning them down.

As Adama and Laura pawed at their clothing, flinging one bit and shoving down another, Dayton watched. Laura welcomed Adama between her legs like a pornographic myth, so regal and somehow so wild. Adama curled a strong arm between them; and guided himself inside of her, punctuating each slow, hard thrust with kisses that made Laura arch and shiver against his chest.

Dayton’s head was gone—swimming and gone.

(Watching them frak reminded him of the temple. One fateful day when he was fourteen, pushed into the audience as a Piconese rite of passage. He stared up at the altar. Hierogamy, they called it. The air thick with incense. Two bodies twined together, a priest and priestess rocking against each other—acting out the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera. He remembered the lump in his throat, the rapid beating of his heart.

Sex, they said, was a way of getting closer to the gods. And though he went in and came out as a young skeptic, Dayton discovered what they meant a few years down the line. On that cool summer night, when he’d loved his first doe-eyed girl …

Dayton just wanted to get closer and closer and closer to them.)

Dayton’s fingers moved on their own. Shucking off his trousers, ripping off his boots, stretching his shirt over his head. Inching closer and closer to the breathy pants and low grunts. And he couldn’t stop it, even if he tried. His heart was heavy and restless, and beat like a drum at his groin. Something about watching her with him (with _him_ , no less) and the steady rock of her hips against his … the movement of her breasts, the clench of her legs against his ribs …

Laura looked over, her hair flung over her cheek, and Dayton was a bit startled when she met his eyes and gave him a beckoning smile. Adama paid no attention to him—or forced himself to ignore Laura’s invitation—when Dayton pressed himself against Laura’s side.

It all worked surprisingly well, moved in a seamless way that Dayton didn’t expect. His hands never crossed paths with Adama’s, his lips were never latched onto the same intriguing space. Laura breathed and moaned and it spurred them on to see her so crazy with wanting, urging them both on with strings of vulgar encouragements. Adama pumping into her, Dayton staving himself off beside her—her hand covering his as he worked himself over and breathed against her and whispered with Adama how much they both wanted her and how crazy she made them. One voice seemed to echo another with endless, babbling strings of endearment.

There was only one hiccup, when they were all sweaty and Adama’s breath was heaving and Laura was so close. And Dayton wanted to see her. He wanted to watch every inch of her as she came; and it hurt so badly, to want it so much. Wanting to be the one buried inside of her.

Only one misstep, when Dayton skimmed his hand down to where the two of them were joined, batting Adama’s fingers away.

“I know what she likes,” he huffed out.

“I don’t give a frak,” Adama growled right back.

“Someone,” she breathed, “Someone … just, please.”

When Adama made her come, without any of Dayton’s tricks, it hurt more than Dayton could say.

And it was sad, sad and lonely, when Laura rode him—misty stars wreathed in her hair. She smiled down at him as he drove up into her; and Dayton couldn’t smile back, even as he gripped her hips to his and spilled himself inside of her.

Her smile, that smile he loved so much, wasn’t because of him.

_And maybe_ , Dayton thought, drifting off to sleep, _maybe it never will be_.

_Maybe, someday, it will._

+++

  
When Dayton pried his eyes open, it was half-dark in the early morning. His naked body shivered in the damp air, and he wiped off the dew that dotted his skin.  
  
Adama was already awake, sitting up and staring at the reeds. He was still naked. His hair stuck up and there was prickly morning fuzz all around his jaw, but his face was that of the warlord they all saw in the Fleet presses. Contemplative and grim, as enduring as beaten stone.  
  
“I don’t think we should speak of this again,” he said, keeping his voice low.  
  
Laura still slept.  
  
Dayton nodded his head, shaking away the blurry images and vague feelings from the night before. “Couldn’t agree more,” he said, getting to his feet and searching out his trousers.  
  
There was a smile in Adama’s voice. “Good.”  
  
He put one leg through. “Trust me, Admiral,” he said, fastening the button, “Even drunk off my ass … this is never seeing the light of day.”  
  
There was silence between them, and Dayton noticed the birds. Wide-awake, chirping away, even though the sun hadn’t breached the horizon. He used to hate that about birds; now, it was an unbelievable comfort.  
  
Adama breathed out. One of those long involuntary sighs. A sweat-sigh, relieving pressure as opposed to heat. And, like sweat, a purely animal reaction. Something that shouldn’t be commented on, unless the sweating man or the sighing man comments on it first.  
  
“Don’t know what I’m gonna do when she’s president again,” Adama said, still staring at the reeds, “If that can happen … if she can convince me that that was …”  
  
He trailed off. They weren’t supposed to speak of it, after all. Speaking of it made it startlingly real; it made shapes emerge from those blurry memories, and neither of them wanted that on their conscious.  
  
“We were all … pretty gone,” Dayton said, lamely.  
  
“That’s a crap excuse,” Adama brooded.  
  
“But it is an excuse,” Dayton said, “And I don’t think you’ll be drunk or baked when making decisions for the Fleet. And she won’t be naked. Hopefully.”  
  
Adama glowered at him “This isn’t a joke.”  
  
“I’m not making any,” Dayton replied, “And … who says she’ll ever be President again? Maybe she won’t.”  
  
Adama stared ahead. “She will. Someday.”  
  
Dayton cast him a dark look. “Thought ‘someday’ was reserved for cabin-building.”  
  
The Admiral swallowed hard, and he didn’t reply.  
  
Dayton didn’t want her as President again. Just the thought of it filled him with dread. When she was President, Dayton was just one of many—cooped up in a tin can of a ship. During her reign, he had lived each day without stimulation or hope. He lived on rations—without windows, without a proper bed. He woke up each morning and fell asleep each night breathing in the stink of sweat and the fearful stench of cabin fever.  
  
He didn’t believe in prophecy. He didn’t believe in Earth.  
  
Baltar had his vote. Even before the discovery of the planet. He wasn’t ashamed to say it.  
  
Dayton relished in the feel of the wind against his body and the sounds of the rustling leaves. Those damned birds and the lapping water. His life with Laura sprung into his mind—small firecracker memories that drowned out everything but these glory days and how she felt under his fingertips.  
  
New Caprica meant that Adama was away for months on end, circling them in space. Far away. New Caprica meant that Dayton could love Laura in peace … at least until the Admiral’s next visit.  
  
And that had to be enough. Dayton had to believe that it was enough.  
  
He had no choice.  
  
Dayton looked over the palisade of reeds, toward the foggy surface of the lake. Without another word, he pushed aside the long grass. The water was freezing as it sluiced against his shins. The mud gave way under his bare feet. And when he waded out, diving beneath the surface, it was as dark as he had ever seen it.  
  
Still, it felt like heaven.  
  
Bubbles danced around his head, billowing from his nose and rising toward the surface. He chased after them, kicking in a flurry and spreading his arms toward the shifting light.  
  
When he broke through, the morning felt so warm. The water washed off his skin and dribbled in rivulets from his hair. Dayton looked toward the horizon, and the sun glowed over one of the mountain peaks. Orange and blinding, beautiful and hot.  
  
Brighter, louder, clearer. It was a new day.  
  
Dayton swam farther out, farther away from the night before and all the dark feelings that had come with it.  
  
He had to.  
  
He watched the sunlight pushing off the water, hitting the changing autumn trees, and setting their colors on fire.  
  
Dayton had to smile.  
  
Because despite every battle, and every skirmish, New Caprica was beautiful.  
  
Because New Caprica was the best thing to ever happen to him.


End file.
